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MOSCOW (AP) \u2014 A Russian space capsule with two women and one man safely landed in a steppe in Kazakhstan on Saturday after their missions aboard the International Space Station.<\/p>\n
The Soyuz MS-24 carrying Russia\u2019s Oleg Novitsky<\/a><\/span><\/span>, NASA’s Loral O’Hara and Marina Vasilevskaya<\/a><\/span><\/span> of Belarus touched down southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan at 12:17 p.m. Kazakh time (0717 GMT).<\/p>\n Those remaining at the orbiting outpost are NASA astronauts Michael Barratt, Matthew Dominick, Tracy Dyson and Jeannette Epps as well as Russian cosmonauts Nikolai Chub, Alexander Grebenkin<\/a><\/span><\/span> and Oleg Kononenko<\/a><\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\n O\u2019Hara arrived at the International Space Station on Sept. 15, 2023, spending a total of 204 days there, NASA said.<\/p>\n Novitsky and Vasilevskaya blasted off to space on March 23, two days later than initially planned. The launch of a Soyuz spacecraft carrying them and Dyson, scheduled for March 21, was aborted at the very last minute<\/a> due to a voltage drop in a power source, according to Yury Borisov, head of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos.<\/p>\n The delay<\/a> resulted in a two-day, 34-orbit trip to the space station for the crew. If the launch had gone as scheduled, the journey would have been much shorter, requiring only two orbits.<\/p>\n The space station, which has served as a symbol of post-Cold War international cooperation, is now one of the last remaining areas of collaboration between Russia and the West<\/a> amid tensions over Moscow\u2019s military action in Ukraine. NASA and its partners hope to continue operating the orbiting outpost until 2030.<\/p>\n Russia has continued to rely on modified versions of Soviet-designed rockets for commercial satellites, as well as crews and cargo to the space station.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n