Christina Koch returns to Earth after record 11-month stay aboard space station

Christina Koch, veteran of six spacewalks outside the International Space Station -- including the first all-female excursion -- joined a Russian commander and an Italian flight engineer for a fiery plunge to a landing in frigid Kazakhstan early Thursday, setting a record for the longest single flight by a female.Strapped into the center seat of their cramped Soyuz MS-13/59S ferry ship, commander Alexander Skvortsov, flanked on the left by Italian co-pilot Luca Parmitano and on the right by Koch, undocked from the space station's upper Poisk module at 12:50 a.m. EST.Looking on from inside the station were Expedition 62 commander Oleg Skripochka and Koch's two spacewalking partners, Jessica Meir and Drew Morgan.After moving a safe distance away, Skvortsov monitored an automated rocket firing starting at 3:18 a.m., a four-minute 38-second braking "burn" that slowed the ship by about 286 mph. (3:12 p.m. local time) near the town of Dzhezkazgan.Russian recovery crews, along with NASA and European Space Agency flight surgeons and support personnel, were stationed nearby and were quickly on the scene to help the returning station fliers out of the Soyuz as they began re-adjusting to the unfamiliar effects of gravity.And the unfamiliar weather: Landing in a foot of snow and feeling the bite of sub-freezing temperatures, all three were carried to nearby recliners and bundled in blankets for initial medical checks, traditional fresh fruit and satellite phone calls home to family and friends.No stranger to cold weather, Koch spent multiple winters in Antarctica and Greenland as a research engineer with Johns Hopkins University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration before joining NASA's astronaut corps in 2013.