NASA astronaut Jeff Williams safely landed back on Earth on Tuesday night after setting a new record for the most time spent in space by an American.
The NASA astronaut, along with Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin of Russia's space agency Roscosmos, departed from the International Space Station at 5:51 p.m. ET and touched down three hours later on the steppe of Kazakhstan aboard Russia's Soyuz TMA-20M spacecraft.
At the point of their landing, at 9:13 p.m. ET, Williams had added 172 days to his four-spaceflight career, bringing his total time off the planet to 534 days, 2 hours and 48 minutes. The previous record holder, Scott Kelly, logged a three-flight total of 520 days, 10 hours and 30 minutes in March.
Landing about 90 miles southeast of the Kazakh town of Dzhezkazgan, the trio were met by Russian recovery team members, who helped them out of their capsule and into chairs to begin their readjustment to gravity.
The crew's trip home marked the official end of the space station's Expedition 48 and the start of Expedition 49.
"We've enjoyed a great stay up here over the last almost six months," Williams said during a change of command ceremony Monday. "We especially enjoyed our stay with the entire crew of Expedition 48."
"I appreciate, Jeff, your efforts as the station's commander. You really did much to ensure success of the expedition," said Anatoly Ivanishin, commander of Expedition 49.
NASA also put it to twitter to welcome their new record-breaking to Earth.
See tweet below with a video.
Williams, Skripochka and Ovchinin arrived at the station on March 18 and spent 172 days in Orbit, before they returned to Earth on Tuesday.Record-breaking astronaut @Astro_Jeff returned to Earth on this week's @Space_Station update. Q? Use #SpaceToGround pic.twitter.com/EjV79lAwoZ— NASA (@NASA) September 9, 2016
Watch another video below.
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