The Russian Soyuz spacecraft, crewed by French, Russian and American astronauts, landed on Saturday at the International Space Station where the astronauts will be on a four-month mission in orbit.
Frenchman Thomas Pesquet, Russian Oleg Novitsky and American Peggy Whitson were launched on Thursday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, NASA announced.
Pesquet, (38) is a rookie astronaut and saxophonist and the first Frenchman to be sent to the International Space Station since 2008.
Novitsky (45) is a Russian pilot and veteran of the Roscosmos space agency, and this is his second stay on the International Space Station.
Whitson (56) is an experienced American astronaut, who with this mission will set the record for the number of days an American astronaut has spent in space.
She will surpass her colleague Jeff Williams' record of 534 days spent in orbit.
Whitson is also the first female astronaut who will serve as commander of the space station twice, since the first time was in 2007.
With the arrival of three astronauts, the number of crew in orbit increases to six, since the crew of the International Space Station already consists of Russians Andrey Borisenko and Sergey Ryzhikov and American Shane Kimbrough.
The price of a flight per seat in the Soyuz, which can carry three people at the same time, costs 71 million dollars.
On the space station, which orbits the Earth at an altitude of 400 kilometers, people have lived continuously for more than 15 years, during which more than 200 people from 18 countries have passed through the station.
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