US astronaut Christina Koch, who led the first all-female spacewalk in 2019, landed in Kazakhstan on Thursday after a record stay on the International Space Station, ending a 328-day mission expected to yield new insights into deep-space travel.
The Soyuz MS-13 capsule touched down on the Kazakh desert steppe at 4.12am (US Eastern Time) carrying Koch, 41, European astronaut Luca Parmitano and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov.
They will be flown by search and recovery teams to the Karaganda region to begin their journey home.
“I’m just so overwhelmed and happy right now,” Koch said, sitting in a chair wrapped in blankets as she waited to be carried into a medical tent to restore her balance in gravity.
Koch’s mission broke the record for the longest stay in space by a woman, previously held by Nasa’s Peggy Whitson.
She also achieved a gender milestone in a spacewalk with fellow Nasa astronaut Jessica Meir last October that marked the first time two women stepped out of the space station at the same time.
