After 241 Days and 102 Million Miles, Soyuz MS-28 Landed on the Kazakh Steppe

A NASA astronaut and two cosmonauts came home Sunday morning. 'Everything was smooth and perfect,' the commander said. 'Everything was just excellent.'

By Naomi Okafor2026-07-26

Verified

Soyuz MS-28 touched down on the Kazakh steppe near Dzhezkazgan at 6:27 in the morning, Eastern time, on Sunday [1].

Aboard: commander Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, flight engineer Sergey Mikaev, and NASA astronaut Chris Williams. They had been on the International Space Station for 241 days, having launched on November 27, 2025 [1].

The distance covered in that time: 3,856 orbits, roughly 102 million miles [1].

Williams was on his first spaceflight and conducted two spacewalks [1].

Kud-Sverchkov, after landing: 'Everything was smooth and perfect. Everything was just excellent' [1].

An American and two Russians spent eight months in a shared machine and came home together, in a week when the countries they launched from were arguing in public about who is helping whom shoot at whom. The station keeps doing this. It is worth noticing that it does.

Sources

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[1]
CBS News - NASA astronaut and cosmonauts return to Earth from the International Space Station
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Naomi Okafor

Hunts for the bill that actually passed, the organizer who actually won, the mayor who actually delivered, and believes celebrating the good is as much a duty as exposing the bad. Volunteers at a food pantry.