Astronauts land from ISS marred by leak, rocket failure

Three astronauts landed back on Earth yesterday after a troubled stint on the ISS marred by an air leak and the failure of a rocket set to bring new crew members. A Soyuz spacecraft ferrying Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency, NASA’s Serena Aunon-Chancellor and Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos from the International Space Station landed safely in Kazakhstan, Russia’s space agency said.

“There’s been a landing... The crew of the manned Soyuz MS09 has returned safely to Earth after 197 days,” Roscosmos said on Twitter. The spacecraft landed slightly ahead of schedule at 0802 Moscow time (0502 GMT), Roscosmos said on its website. Live footage on the websites of NASA and Roscosmos did not show the landing of the astronauts’ capsule due to thick fog in the Kazakh steppe.

When the astronauts blasted off in June, they were one of the least experienced crews ever to join the International Space Station -- only Gerst had been on a space mission before, in 2014.