Two Russian astronauts have returned to Earth after spending 374 days in space in what has been the longest mission since the mid-1990s.
The Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft made a parachute-assisted landing at 4.59pm (local time) yesterday on the steppe of Kazakhstan, south-east of the town of Dzhezkazgan, NASA said in a statement.
Roscosmos cosmonauts Nikolai Chub and Oleg Kononenko departed the spacecraft after first launching to the International Space Station last September.
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Their trip spanned 374 days and 5984 orbits in space.
It was the longest mission since Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov set the record for at 437 days continously spent at space between 1994 and 1995.
Kononenko has accrued to his all-time record of 1111 non-consecutive days in orbit.
He has now completed five missions while Chub completed his first spaceflight.
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NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson, who spent 184 days in space, also returned to earth with Chub and Kononenko.
The trio boarded a helicopter from the landing site to the recovery staging city of Karaganda in Kazakhstan.
Kononenko and Chub will depart for a training base in Star City in Russia while Dyson will board a NASA plane back to Houston.
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