Capsule carrying 2 Russians and 1 American heads to Earth from space station

MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian space capsule undocked from the International Space Station on Monday to take three astronauts back to Earth, two of them completing a record-long stay on the orbiting laboratory.

The capsule carrying Russians Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub and American Tracy Dyson is expected to land in the vast Kazakhstan steppe about 3 1/2 hours after the undocking.

Kononenko and Chub blasted off for the space station on Sept. 15, 2023, and on Friday set the record for the longest continuous mission on the ISS. Dyson, in her third mission into outer space, spent six months aboard.

Eight astronauts remain on the space station, including Americans Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who have remained long past their scheduled return to Earth.

They arrived in June as the first crew of Boeing’s new Starliner capsule. But their trip was marred by thruster troubles and helium leaks, and the U.S. space agency NASA decided it was too risky to return them on Starliner.

The two astronauts will ride home with SpaceX next year.