US astronaut returns to Earth after longest mission

Nasa’s Christina Koch returned to Earth safely yesterday after shattering the spaceflight record for female astronauts with a stay of almost 11 months aboard the International Space Station. Koch touched down at 0912 GMT on the Kazakh steppe after 328 days in space, along with Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency and Alexander Skvortsov of the Russian space agency. Koch, a 41-year-old Michigan-born engineer, on December 28 last year beat the previous record for a single spaceflight by a woman of 289 days, set by Nasa veteran Peggy Whitson in 2016-17. Koch also made history as one half of the first-ever all-woman spacewalk along with Nasa counterpart Jessica Meir -- her classmate from NASA training -- in October last year.