Washington, June 3: Three members of the International Space Station Expedition 55 crew returned safely to Earth on Sunday after nearly half a year-long stint in speace.
American astronaut Scott Tingle, Japanese astronaut Norishige Kanai and Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov had lived and worked in a low-Earth orbit for 168 days.
"Touchdown! @Anton_Astrey, @Astro_Kanai and @Astro_Maker are back on Earth after parachuting to a landing in Kazakhstan today at 8:39 a.m ET (6:39pm Kazakh time)," International Space Station said in a tweet.
Expedition 55 Flight Engineers Tingle, Kanai and Shkaplerov undocked from the International Space Station at 5:16 a.m. EDT to begin their trip home, NASA said in a blogpost.
This mission was the first for Tingle and Kanai, and Shkaplerov now has logged 532 days in space on three flights.
The crew completed hundreds of experiments, including materials testing, a study of the effect of microgravity on the bone marrow and research into plant growth in space.
Tingle and Kanai ventured outside the station on separate spacewalks to perform work on parts of the Canadarm2 robotic arm.
They also participated in dozens of educational events as part of NASA's Year of Education on Station.
Shkaplerov conducted a record-setting spacewalk in February with fellow cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin to replace an electronics box for a communications antenna on the Zvezda service module.
The spacewalk timed out at 8 hours and 13 minutes -- the longest in Russian space program history.
The Expedition 56 crew -- Commander Drew Feustel and Ricky Arnold of NASA, and Oleg Artemyev of Roscosmos -- will operate the station and prepare for the arrival of three new crew members on June 8.
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Barwani (MP), Jan 28 (PTI) Police on Wednesday detained a 17-year-old relative of a seven-year-old girl in Barwani district of Madhya Pradesh for allegedly raping her and killing her by throwing her into a canal, a police official said.
Superintendent of Police Jagdish Dawar told reporters that the body of the child was recovered from the Indira Sagar Canal on January 26, following information from residents of a village in the Rajpur police station area of the district.
He said the post-mortem report concluded severe injuries to the girl’s private parts and attributed her death to drowning.
Dawar said a 17-year-old boy, a close relative of the girl, has been detained in connection with the rape-murder.
The teenager told the police that he kidnapped the girl from her home on the night of January 25 while her family members were asleep, took her to a nearby canal and raped her, according to the official.
When the girl started screaming during the sexual assault, the minor boy allegedly threw her into the canal, with the intention of killing her. The child drowned in the water body, the official said.
The detained minor will be produced in a juvenile court.
A case has been registered under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, and an investigation is underway, he added.
