German astronaut Alexander Gerst returns to Earth from ISS, again
European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst started his return to earth for the second time on Wednesday as he left the International Space Station (ISS) with Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos and Serena Aunon-Chancellor of NASA.
Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos, Serena Aunon-Chancellor of NASA and Alexander Gerst of the ESA.
Gerst had been part of ISS Expeditions 40 and 41 from May to November 2014, and went back up to the space station in June.
Space station residents held a change-of-command ceremony with Gerst handing over to Oleg Kononenko of Roscosmos on Wednesday afternoon.
The 42-year-old Gerst sent out a series of messages on Twitter, including lines by German-born American poet Charles Bukowski: “There is a place in the heart that will never be filled. A space.”
Gerst, born in Künzelsau, in the southern German state of Baden-Württemberg, also included a message to his not-yet-born grandchildren. He apologized for the state of the planet and its resources left by his generation, but told them how wonderful it was to be just three people on a spaceship looking at the millions on distant Earth below.
“I will miss this place,” he wrote.
Coming home via Kazakhstan
The three descending astronauts were scheduled to land late Thursday morning southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan (0503 UTC).
The trio has been round the earth 3,152 times and traveled 83.3 million miles (134 million kilometers) over the 197 days of its mission.
They will travel together by helicopter to a recovery staging area in southern Kazakhstan before going their separate ways home.
jm/sms (Reuters, dpa)
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