Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin gets medical check shortly after landing in a remote area outside the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, on Thursday. Photo: AFP
An American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts touched down on the Kazakhstan steppe on Thursday, completing a 196-day mission that began with the first launch under lockdown conditions.
NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner landed around 150 kilometers southeast of the Kazakh city of Zhezkazgan at 2:54 GMT, footage broadcast by the Russian space agency Roscosmos showed.
A NASA commentator citing communications from crews on the ground at the landing site said that the Soyuz descent module had landed in a vertical position and that the crew were working on getting the trio out of the craft.
The three-man crew had blasted off minus the unusual fanfare in April with around half of the world's population living under national lockdowns imposed to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
The mission coincided with the arrival at the space station in May of the first astronauts to blast off from US soil for almost a decade.
The mission carried out by tycoon Elon Musk's SpaceX company as part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program has helped fuel talk of a new "space race" between a number of countries.
Prior to returning from his third mission in space, former US Navy SEAL Cassidy, 50, tweeted a picture of blood samples that astronauts have to submit at various points in their mission, including just before undocking.
First-time flyer Vagner was a rare Roscosmos presence on the micro-blogging platform, where most NASA astronauts have a profile.
Ivanishin is wrapping up his third mission, after NASA's Kathleen Rubins, with whom he launched to the ISS in 2016, arrived for a second stint aboard the station last week along with Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov of Roscosmos.
The ISS, has been a rare example of cooperation between Moscow and Washington.