NASA Astronaut Jonny Kim Returns Home | International Space Station

NASA Astronaut Jonny Kim Returns Home | International Space Station

NASA astronaut Jonny Kim is seen outside the Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft with a gifted Matryoshka Doll after he landed with Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov, and Alexey Zubritsky of Russia in a remote area near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan on Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. 

NASA astronaut Jonny Kim is seen outside the Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft after he landed.

NASA astronaut Jonny Kim rest in a chair outside the Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft after he landed.

NASA astronaut Jonny Kim is carried to a medical tent shortly after landing.

NASA astronaut Jonny Kim boards a Russian MI-8 helicopter to take him to Karaganda.

NASA astronaut Jonny Kim, seated, arrives at the Karaganda Airport in Kazakhstan.

NASA astronaut Jonny Kim, seated, arrives at the Karaganda Airport in Kazakhstan.

NASA astronaut Jonny Kim arrives at the Karaganda Airport in Kazakhstan.

At 12:03 a.m. EST (10:03 a.m. local time), December 9, 2025, the Russian Soyuz MS-27 crew spacecraft made a parachute-assisted landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan, southeast of the town of Dzhezkazgan.

NASA astronaut Jonny Kim and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky of Russia orbited Earth 3,920 times and traveled nearly 104 million miles over the course of their 245-day mission. The Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft launched and docked with the International Space Station on April 8, 2025.

Matryoshka dolls (Russian: матрёшка), also known as stacking dolls, nesting dolls, Russian tea dolls, or Russian dolls, are a set of wooden dolls of decreasing size placed one inside another. A set of matryoshkas consists of a wooden figure, which separates at the middle, top from bottom, to reveal a smaller figure of the same sort inside, which has, in turn, another figure inside of it, and so on.

This was Kim’s first spaceflight, where he served as flight engineer for Expedition 72 and 73. This also was Zubritsky first trip to the International Space Station. Ryzhikov now has logged a total of 603 days in space during three trips to the orbital complex, ranking him 13th all time.

The three crew members flew separately by helicopter to Karaganda, Kazakhstan, where recovery teams are based. Kim then boarded a NASA aircraft for his return to the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, while Ryzhikov and Zubritsky departed for their training base in Star City, Russia.

Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Date: Dec. 9, 2025

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