Capsule carrying 2 Russians 1 American heads to Earth from space station

Moscow, Sep 23 (AP) A Russian space capsule undocked from the International Space Station on Monday to take three astronauts back to Earth, two of them completing a record-long stay on the orbiting laboratory.
     The capsule carrying Russians Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub and American Tracy Dyson is expected to land in the vast Kazakhstan steppe about 3 1/2 hours after the undocking.
     Kononenko and Chub blasted off for the space station on Sept 15, 2023, and on Friday set the record for the longest continuous mission on the ISS. Dyson, in her third mission into outer space, spent six months aboard.
     Eight astronauts remain on the space station, including Americans Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who have remained long past their scheduled return to Earth.
     They arrived in June as the first crew of Boeing's new Starliner capsule. But their trip was marred by thruster troubles and helium leaks, and the US space agency NASA decided it was too risky to return them on Starliner.
     The two astronauts will ride home with SpaceX next year. (AP) SCY
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(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)