OREANDA-NEWS. An international crew consisting of Roscosmos cosmonauts Anatoly Ivanishin, Ivan Vagner and NASA astronaut Christopher Cassidy returned to Earth. The spacecraft Soyuz MS-16 with two Russians and one American on board undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) at night and successfully landed in Kazakhstan.

The spaceship separated from the ISS at 23:32 UTC. Its propulsion system started to decelerate at 02:01, after which Soyuz began to deorbit. Then it was divided into modules, and the crew in the descent vehicle experienced overloads of about 4g. After that, cosmonauts and astronaut successfully landed. The returning members of the expedition spent in orbit 196 days.

Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov (Russia), as well as Kathleen Rubins (USA), remained on the ISS. Before returning, Cassidy transferred command of the station to Ryzhikov.