Station trio comes home

TMA-14M above fog before landing. Credit: NASA

Three people fell back to earth on March 11, 2015 in their Soyuz TMA-14M spacecraft after spending 167 days in space.

NASA astronaut Barry Wilmore, and Russian cosmonauts Alexander Samokutyaev and Yelena Serova undocked their Soyuz from the International Space Station earlier that day 

Yelena Serova was only the fourth Russian woman to fly in space.

Berry "Butch" Wilmore participated in three spacewalks to help prepare the space station for future commercial crew vehicles, as well as other various maintenance.

Their mission into space started off with a little concern, as one of the two solar panels of the Soyuz did not deploy. But upon docking, enough vibration caused the panel to shake open.

During landing procedures, there was a longer than normal communications blackout, which caused some to be concerned, but communications was eventually reestablished. 

Landing occurred in the southeast of Dzhezkazgan, but touchdown took extra time to confirm because of a low cloud deck with heavy fog.

The next crew to go to the station will launch abourd Soyuz TMA-16M on March 27, 2015 at 2:42 p.m. CDT. That crew will include Gannady Padalka on his fifth flight to space, as well as two crew members that will stay on ISS for a whole year.

Scott Kelly and Mikhail Korniyenkio, on their fourth and second flights respectively, will stay in space till March 2016.