Crew Returns From International Space Station After Nearly Six Months in Space

After five and half months in space, three International Space Station crew members returned home Sunday.

Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and Flight Engineers Karen Nyberg and Luca Parmitano landed in the steppe of Kazakhstan southeast of the city of Dzhezkazgan just before 9:00 a.m. Kazakh time.

NASA and Russian recovery teams arrived at the site by helicopter shortly after in order to help the crew and conduct standard health assessments.

The team undocked from the space station at 6:26 EST while the zero-gravity lab was in orbit 262 miles over northeast Mongolia. The cosmonauts carried with them the Olympic torch, which had gone for its first-ever spacewalk the day before as part of the relay leading up to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

The trio's departure marked the end of Expedition 37 and the beginning of Expedition 38, overseen by Commander Oleg Kotov. Yurchikhin handed the helm off to Kotov during a change of command ceremony Sunday shortly before he, Nyberg and Parmitano boarded the Russian capsule designed to ferry them back to Earth.

In all, Yurchikhin has logged 537 days in space spread across four mission, starting in 2002, and Nyberg a total of 180 days in space across two missions. Expedition 37 was Parmitano's first go in space, during which he logged 166 along with the others.

Left behind are Kotov, Sergey Ryazanskiy and Mike Hopkins, all of whom arrived on Sept. 25 and are scheduled to return March 12. Mikhail Tyurin, Rick Mastracchio and Koichi Wakata are also aboard the station, having arrived Thursday following a launch that was aired live from Times Square in New York City. Their arrival marked the first time since October 2009 that nine people occupied the ISS in the absence of a space shuttle.

The trio are scheduled to return home May 2014.