US astronaut Christina Koch returns to Earth after breaking record for female space flight
- Local Kazakhs on horseback were among those to witness the capsule landing as Koch touched down after 328 days in space
- She said she would miss zero gravity as ‘it’s really fun to be in a place where you can just bounce around between the ceiling and the floor’
Koch touched down on the Kazakh steppe after 328 days in space, along with Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency and Alexander Skvortsov of the Russian space agency.
Koch was shown seated and smiling broadly after being extracted from the Soyuz descent module in the Roscosmos space agency’s video footage from the landing site.
“I am so overwhelmed and happy right now,” said Koch, who blasted off on March 14 last year.
Parmitano pumped his fists in the air after being lifted into his chair while Skvortsov was shown eating an apple.
Local Kazakhs on horseback were among those to witness the capsule landing in the snow-covered steppe as support crews gathered around the three astronauts, Nasa commentator Rob Navias said.
“I’ve never seen this,” Navias said, reporting that the men stopped to chat with engineering personnel.