US astronaut Peggy Whitson has returned to Earth after a record-breaking mission.
She has spent a total of 665 days off the planet — 288 days on this mission alone.
After the 9:21pm ET landing, @AstroPeggy has a total of 665 days in space, the U.S. record and places 8th on all-time space endurance list pic.twitter.com/grVIRo3SmX
— NASA (@NASA) September 3, 2017
Ms Whitson’s time in orbit exceeds that of any other American and any other woman worldwide.
Along with another American and a Russian, she landed in Kazakhstan shortly after sunrise on Sunday.
The space capsule coming in to land. (AP)
She became the world’s oldest spacewoman at the age of 57 and most experienced female space walker following her launch last November. She was also the first woman to command the space station twice. This was her third flight.
Returning cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin has logged even more time in orbit – 673 days over five missions. The other astronaut to return home was Jack Fischer, with 136 days in orbit. Both men flew up in April.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article