3 space station astronauts safely return to Earth

The other three ISS crewmembers, Commander Scott Kelly of NASA and Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Sergey Volkov will remain on the space station until the spring of 2016.

Kononenko, Lindgren and Yui arrived at the station on July 22.

The launch marked the 83rd time the Zenit rocket has been launched into space since its first flight in 1985. They will be joined by three new crew members next Tuesday, including British astronaut Tim Peake.

The trio, Astronauts Kimiya Yui, KG5BPH, and Kjell Lindgren, KO5MOS, and Russian Cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, RN3DX, landed safely in their Soyuz spacecraft in Kazakhstan at 1312 UTC. Due to the weather though, the number of recovery helicopters were limited from 12 to four and the post-landing medical exams were deferred, in favor of promptly flying the crew to the nearest airport. Kononenko will be flown back to Star City near Moscow while Lindgren and Yui will board a NASA jet for the long flight back to the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Kjell Lindgren shortly after his return to Earth.

Malenchenko and Kopra are station veterans while Peake will be making his first flight.

During his time in space he orbited Earth 2,256 times, traveling a total of 59.6 million miles and also ventured out into the void on two spacewalks to conduct upgrades on the station, according to NASA. The fifth Japanese HTV cargo craft brought several tons of supplies to the station in August, and in October, a Russian ISS Progress cargo craft docked to the station, also bringing tons of supplies. It is the first time a crew has landed after sunset.

Six Russian cosmonauts previously spent more than 300 days in space aboard the now-defunct Soviet station Mir. From there to touchdown took about 12 minutes.

A search and rescue team works on the site of landing of the Soyuz TMA-17M capsule carrying the International Space Station (ISS) crew of Kjell Lindgren of the U.S., Oleg Kononenko of Russian Federation and Kimiya Yui of Japan near the town of Dzhezkazgan (Zhezkazgan), Kazakhstan, December 11, 2015.