Three space travelers safely returned to Earth from the International Space Station today (Sept. 2) as their Soyuz MS-04 spacecraft touched down on the steppes of Kazakhstan, ending a record-shattering mission for one American crewmember. 
 
 NASA's record-breaking astronaut Peggy Whitson returned home on the Soyuz from an extended 288-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS). During her stay, she set a new record for the most cumulative time in space by an American with 665 days accrued. Her crewmates, NASA astronaut Jack Fischer and Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin both spent 136 days aboard the orbiting laboratory. Landing occurred at 9:21 p.m. EDT (0121 Sept. 3 GMT), though it was Sunday morning local time at the touchdown site. 
 
 Expedition 51/52 crewmembers Fischer and Yurchikhin arrived at the ISS in April with an empty seat in their Soyuz. Whitson, who arrived in November with Expedition 50/51, filled that empty seat for the return flight after NASA and Russia's space agency Roscosmos agreed to extend her stay through Expedition 52. [In Photos: Record-Breaking Astronaut Peggy Whitson Returns to Earth] 
 
 With all three seats filled, the Soyuz MS-04 spacecraft undocked from the space station's Poisk module at 5:58 p.m. EDT (1758 GMT), kicking off the crew's 3-hour and 24-minute journey back to Earth. About three hours later, the Soyuz barreled into Earth's atmosphere traveling at a speed of over 500 mph (800 km/h). 
 
 Friction with the atmosphere caused temperatures outside the spacecraft to reach a scorching 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,400 degrees Celsius). A heat shield outside the Soyuz helped keep the crew relatively cool during the plunge. A series of parachutes were deployed to slow the spacecraft down about 15 minutes before touchdown, followed by a last-second burn of six soft-landing engines that helped cushion the last few feet of the fall. [Infographic: Russia's Soyuz Space Capsule Explained] 
 
 They successfully touched down on target in a remote area near the town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan. The Soyuz spacecraft tipped over onto its side, which is common for Soyuz crew landings, NASA TV commentator Rob Navias said during a webcast of the landing. 
 
 NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson (left), Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin (center) and NASA astronaut Jack Fischer (right) pose for a photo after landing in Kazakhstan on Sept. 3, 2017 local time (late Sept. 2, EDT). Whitson spent 288 days on the space station during her flight, with Fischer and Yurchikhin spending 136 days on their mission. Credit: NASA TV 
 
 Recovery teams watched the landing from helicopters nearby before descending to the landing site to help the space travelers out of their capsule. After the crew gets checked out in a medical tent on-site, the helicopters will carry them back to Kazakhstan's Karaganda airport for a traditional welcoming ceremony before they board planes and head home. 
 
 While Yurchikhin will go to Russia's cosmonaut center in Moscow, Whitson and Fischer will head to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. After the devastating floods brought by Hurricane Harvey led NASA to close the center, the agency had to come up with a contingency plan for getting the astronauts home. 
 
 "Because of the after-effects of Hurricane Harvey, the NASA Gulfstream jet was unable to leave Houston in time to make it to the staging city of Karaganda in order to perform what is called a 'direct return' of the crew back to Houston," Navias said Saturday morning as the crewmembers said farewell to their colleagues in space. [Space Station Photos: Expedition 52 Crew in Orbit] 
 
 A Russian Soyuz space capsule carrying NASA astronauts Peggy Whitson, Jack Fischer and Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin lands on the Kazakhstan steppe on Sept. 3, 2017 local time (late Sept. 2 EDT). The trio ended a months-long mission to the International Space Station. Credit: NASA TV 
 
 "The European Space Agency stepped up to the plate and offered the use of its plane that has been to Karaganda before," Navias said. "They will be poised in Karaganda to await the arrival of Whitson and Fischer." The astronauts will then fly back to the European Astronaut Center in Cologne, Germany, where the NASA Gulfstream jet will pick them up and take them back to Houston. 
 
 Their return is still scheduled for Sunday night, "just about the same time they would have returned to Houston had the NASA Gulfstream jet done this all by itself," Navias said, adding that none of the science experiments or research samples the crew brought back with them had been impacted. 
 
 "Our home is fine, but so many friends and co-workers have been impacted [by the storm]," Whitson said in an interview with NASA. "For example, in order to keep mission control running, the team (three shifts of a skeleton support crew) were sleeping on cots in the backup mission control rooms. Their sacrifices for the station and keeping things running up here are amazing." 
 
 After the astronauts return to Houston, they will spend the next 45 days doing physical rehabilitation and undergoing a series of medical tests both for health reasons and scientific research. "There are many investigations on the human body that we've been doing up here in orbit, so we'll have to continue those studies as well during that first 45 days," Whitson said during an in-flight interview with Space.com. 
 
 "In addition to that, we're doing a lot of debriefs talking to the ground teams about procedures that worked really well, procedures that we need to try to improve, tools or hardware that we had issues with — just ideas for how to operationally improve the efficiencies up here so that we can get even more done," she said. "So that first 45 days is actually going to be very busy." 
 
 The Expedition 52 crew poses for a portrait at the International Space Station. Pictured clockwise from top right: Paolo Nespoli, Jack Fischer, Peggy Whitson, Sergey Ryazanskiy, Randy Bresnik and Fyodor Yurchikhin. Credit: ESA/NASA 
 
 Back at the space station, NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik, European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli and Russian cosmonaut Sergey Ryazansky will be the only three crewmembers on board until Sept. 12, when the Expedition 52/53 crewmembers arrive. NASA astronauts Joe Acaba and Mark Vande Hei and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin will then dock at the ISS in their Soyuz MS-05 spacecraft and will spend the next six months in space. On Friday (Sept. 1) Yurchikhin handed over command of the ISS to Bresnik. 
 
 Yurchikhin has now spent a total of 673 days in space over the course of five flights and is now is now in seventh place on the all-time spaceflight endurance list. He has spent just eight more days in space than Whitson, whose 665 days in space puts her at number eight on that list. She also became NASA's all-time spaceflight duration record holder during this mission when she passed NASA astronaut Jeff Williams' record of 534 days. Whitson's 288-day aboard the station was also the longest single spaceflight by a woman of any nationality. Fischer, a rookie astronaut returning from his first trip to space, has now accrued 136 days in orbit. 
 
 Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her @hannekescience. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com. ||||| The Soyuz MS-04 spacecraft lands with Expedition 52 Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin of Roscosmos and Flight Engineers Peggy Whitson and Jack Fischer of NASA near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, Sunday,... (Associated Press) 
 
 CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Astronaut Peggy Whitson returned to Earth late Saturday, wrapping up a record-breaking flight that catapulted her to first place for U.S. space endurance. 
 
 Whitson's 665 days off the planet — 288 days on this mission alone — exceeds that of any other American and any other woman worldwide. 
 
 She checked out of the International Space Station just hours earlier, along with another American and a Russian. Their Soyuz capsule landed in Kazakhstan shortly after sunrise Sunday — Saturday night back in the U.S. 
 
 Whitson was the last one carried from the Soyuz. She immediately received a pair of sunglasses to put on, as she rested in a chair on the barren, wind-swept Kazak steppes. Medical personnel took her pulse, standard practice. She then received a bouquet of flowers with the greeting, "Welcome back, Peggy." 
 
 Besides duration, Whitson set multiple other records while in orbit: world's oldest spacewoman, at age 57, and most experienced female spacewalker, with 10. She also became the first woman to command the space station twice following her launch last November. 
 
 Returning cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin logged even more time in space: 673 days over five missions. NASA astronaut Jack Fischer returned after 136 days aloft. The men flew up in April. 
 
 All three briefly held hands for a photo op, before being carried one by one in their chairs to the medical tent. 
 
 It was an emotional farewell to the space station for Whitson, Yurchikhin and Fischer. Before retreating into their Soyuz, they embraced the three colleagues they were leaving behind at the 250-mile-high complex. Yurchikhin patted the inside of the station before floating into his Soyuz for the final time. 
 
 The station's newest commander, Randy Bresnik, noted the outpost was losing 1,474 days of spaceflight experience with the departure of Whitson, Yurchikhin and Fischer. Four years and two weeks, he pointed out. 
 
 "We are in your debt for the supreme dedication that you guys have to the human mission of exploration," Bresnik told them on the eve of their departure. He offered up special praise for Whitson — "American space ninja" — and wished them all Godspeed. 
 
 Yurchikhin is now No. 7 on the world's all-time endurance list, followed by Whitson at No. 8. The top spot belongs to Russian Gennady Padalka, with 879 days in space over five flights. 
 
 Whitson, a biochemist, set a breakneck pace on all three of her space station expeditions, continually asking for more — and still more — scientific research to do. Scientists on the ground said it often was hard to keep up with her. She even experimented on food up there, trying to add some pizazz to the standard freeze-dried meals. Tortillas transformed into apple pies on her watch. 
 
 Whitson was supposed to fly back in June after a half-year in space. But when an extra seat opened up on this Soyuz, she jumped at the chance to stay in orbit an extra three months. Only one other American — yearlong spaceman Scott Kelly — has spent longer in space on a single mission. 
 
 Except for the past week, Whitson said her mission hurried by. She's hungry for pizza and can't wait to use a regular flush toilet again. She's also eager to reunite with her husband, Clarence Sams, a biochemist who also works at Johnson Space Center in Houston. 
 
 Because of the effects of Hurricane Harvey, NASA could not get its plane from Houston to Kazakhstan in time for the crew's landing. Instead, the European Space Agency offered to transport Whitson and Fischer to Cologne, Germany, where they will meet up with the NASA plane for the final leg of their journey. They should be back in Houston on Sunday night. 
 
 Three men remain at the space station: Bresnik, a Russian and an Italian. They will be joined by two Americans and a Russian following liftoff from Kazakhstan on Sept. 12. 
 
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 Online: 
 
 NASA: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html
– Astronaut Peggy Whitson returned to Earth late Saturday, wrapping up a record-breaking flight that catapulted her to first place for US space endurance. Whitson's 665 days off the planet—288 days on this mission alone—exceeds that of any other American and any other woman worldwide. She checked out of the International Space Station just hours earlier, along with another American and a Russian, reports the AP. Their Soyuz capsule landed in Kazakhstan shortly after sunrise Sunday. The journey back to Earth took three hours and 24 minutes, notes Space.com. Besides duration, Whitson set multiple other records while in orbit: world's oldest spacewoman, at age 57, and most experienced female spacewalker, with 10. She also became the first woman to command the space station twice following her launch last November. Returning cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin logged even more time in space: 673 days over five missions. NASA astronaut Jack Fischer returned after 136 days aloft. The station's newest commander, Randy Bresnik, called Whitson an "American space ninja." Yurchikhin is now No. 7 on the world's all-time endurance list, followed by Whitson at No. 8. Whitson, a biochemist, set a breakneck pace on all three of her space station expeditions, continually asking for more—and still more—scientific research to do. Scientists on the ground said it often was hard to keep up with her. She even experimented on food, trying to add pizazz to standard freeze-dried meals. Except for the past week, Whitson said her mission hurried by. She's hungry for pizza and eager to reunite with her husband, Clarence Sams, a biochemist who works at Johnson Space Center in Houston.