This is what it looks like to come back to Earth from space
Three humans who spent months aboard the International Space Station came home Sunday housed within a tiny capsule beneath a parachute descending to Earth.
New photos released by NASA show the return of NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin and Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi to Earth, coming in for a sunlit landing in remote Kazakhstan Sunday.
The trio of Space Station crewmembers just finished spending 115 days in space performing experiments and just living life on the orbiting outpost.
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The three crew members returned to the planet's surface aboard a Russian-built Soyuz spacecraft. The ship, which is the only crew-carrying craft currently flying to the Space Station, is designed to bring astronauts and cosmonauts to the station and deliver them home again after their stay.
The Soyuz looked pretty banged up after entering the Earth's atmosphere on Sunday, but it kept its precious cargo safe nonetheless.
After coming back down to Earth, Rubins, Ivanishin and Onishi were put through a battery of medical tests to see how they fared after months in the weightlessness of the Space Station.
But before being taken away for testing, the three accomplished space explorers were taken from their capsule and carried to chairs with comfy looking blankets to keep them warm as they got the chance to speak on satellite phones and to their handlers.
While the lounge chairs look goofy, they actually serve a specific purpose. During their time on the station, crew members don't feel the tug of gravity at all, so coming back to Earth can be a rough ride for a body unused to feeling its own weight.
The chairs are used to help ease astronauts and cosmonauts before trying to stand or walk.
Rubins, Ivanishin and Onishi left the station in the hands of three other crewmembers that should live and work aboard the huge laboratory for months before coming home in the same way as those before them.
NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough, one of the crew members aboard the station now, also got a good look at the departing crew Saturday as they undocked.
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In mid-November, three more — NASA's Peggy Whitson, cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy and European astronaut Thomas Pesquet — are scheduled to launch to the Space Station, bringing it back up to its full crew of six.
Miriam Kramer worked as a staff writer for Space.com for about 2.5 years before joining Mashable to cover all things outer space. She took a ride in weightlessness on a zero-gravity flight and watched rockets launch to space from places around the United States. Miriam received her Master's degree in science, health and environmental reporting from New York University in 2012, and she originally hails from Knoxville, Tennessee. Follow Miriam on Twitter at @mirikramer.
