Three International Space Station astronauts land in Kazakhstan

An International Space Station crew including an American, a Briton and a Russian landed safely on June 18 in the sun-drenched steppes of Kazakhstan.

The Soyuz space capsule carrying NASA’s Tim Kopra, Tim Peake of the European Space Agency, and Roscosmos’s Yury Malenchenko landed on June 18 about 145 kilometers southeast of the Kazakh city of Zhezqazghan in central Kazakhstan, RFERL reports.

After being carefully extracted from the Soyuz capsule, Peake said the trip was the “best ride I’ve been on ever…. It’s just been fantastic from start to finish.”

Helicopters with recovery teams circled the area as the capsule slowly descended from the skies under a massive orange-and-white parachute.

The three men first flew to the ISS from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in December and spent a total of 186 days in space.

They conducted hundreds of experiments while on board geared toward future human exploration missions deeper into space.

There are now just two Russian and one American astronaut on the ISS, but three new crew members are due to arrive in three weeks.