Three International Space Station crewmen heading back to Earth

[December 11, 2015]  By Irene Klotz
 
 CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Three International Space Station crew members got a jump on holiday travel, boarding a Russian Soyuz capsule on Friday for an express ride back to Earth.

NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and Japan's Kimiya Yui pulled away from the station at 4:49 a.m. EST (0949 GMT) as the orbital outpost soared 250 miles (400 km) over Earth, a NASA Television broadcast showed.

Their Soyuz spacecraft was scheduled to make a parachute landing northeast of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, about 3.5 hours later.

"Have a good stay, don't miss us too much," Kononenko radioed to three crewmates still aboard the station, a Russian translator said.

Lindgren, Kononenko and Yui have been in orbit for nearly five months. Their replacements are slated to blast off from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome on Tuesday.

Left aboard the $100 billion station are U.S. astronaut and commander Scott Kelly and Russian flight engineers Mikhail Kornienko and Sergey Volkov.

Kelly and Kornienko are in the final months of a year-long mission, the longest stint in space since crews began living on the station in 2000. They are due to land on March 1.

Six Russian cosmonauts previously spent more than 300 days in space aboard the now-defunct Soviet station Mir. The longest flight lasted nearly 438 days.

Kelly and Kornienko’s year-long mission is a trial run as the 15-nation station partnership begins planning for longer missions to the moon, Mars and other destinations beyond the space station.

(Reporting by Irene Klotz; Editing by Victoria Cavaliere and Richard Balmforth)

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