After orbiting Earth for 172 days, three members the International Space Station’s Expedition 48 crew undocked their Soyuz TMA-20M spacecraft from the outpost and barreled through the atmosphere a couple hours later to land on the Steppe of Kazakhstan.

The official landing time was 09:13 EDT Sept. 6 (01:13 GMT Sept. 7) southeast of the town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan. Russian search and recovery teams circling the area in helicopters then landed near the capsule to help NASA astronaut Jeff Williams, and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Skripochka and Aleksey Ovchinin out of the Soyuz after their nearly six-month stay in at the orbiting laboratory.