A U.S. astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts made a parachute landing in Kazakhstan on Monday (April 10), wrapping up a nearly six-month mission aboard the International Space Station, a NASA TV broadcast showed. <br /> <br />The Russian Soyuz capsule, which left the station shortly before 4 a.m. EDT (0800 GMT), touched down southeast of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, at 7:20 a.m. EDT (1120 GMT). <br /> <br />Seated in the capsule were returning station commander Shane Kimbrough of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko from Russian space agency Roscosmos. <br /> <br />Three crew members remain aboard the space station, a $100 billion research laboratory that flies about 250 miles (400 km) above Earth. In command is NASA's Peggy Whitson, who on April 24 will break the 534-day record for the most time spent in space by a U.S. astronaut. <br /> <br />Whitson, a veteran of two previous missions on the station, is the first woman to hold the post of commander twice.
