ESA astronaut André Kuipers, together with his Russian Commander Oleg Kononenko and NASA astronaut Donald Pettit, landed safely on the steppes of Kazakhstan on 1 July 2012, at 10:14 CEST (08:14 UT), in their Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft.
During his six-month PromISSe mission on the International Space Station, André conducted over 50 scientific experiments in the world’s only permanent microgravity laboratory.
Credits: ESA–S. Corvaja, 2012
Expedition 31 Commander Oleg Kononenko, NASA Flight Engineer Don Pettit and European Space Agency Flight Engineer Andre Kuipers were greeted in a traditional ceremony at the airport in Karaganda, Kazakhstan on 1 July 2012, hours after landing in their Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft on the steppe of Kazakhstan southeast of the town of Dzhezkazgan.
After the ceremony, the crew split up, with Kononenko returning to his training base in Star City, Russia, while Pettit and Kuipers boarded a NASA plane in Karaganda to return to the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The trio completed 193 days in space and 191 days aboard the International Space Station following a launch in late December. The footage includes a short interview conducted André in Karaganda before beginning the trip back to Houston (starts at 7'51").
