Astronauts Return To Earth To Find A World Transformed By Coronavirus

The three-person crew of the International Space Station (ISS) returned to Earth on Friday morning, landing back to a world that has been entirely transformed by the coronavirus in the time they were away.

Americans Jessica Meir and Andrew Morgan and Russian Oleg Skripochka, left from the US to space in 2019. While Morgan was on the ISS since July last year, Meir and Skripochka were there since September.

After spending 205 and 272 days respectively, their arrival back to earth was surprisingly different. All three astronauts landed near Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan.

Lake Balkhash #Kazakhstan isn’t all that far from where we’ll be landing in our #Soyuz on Friday . . . daydreaming about what it’ll feel like to be immersed in water again. . .#EarthArt pic.twitter.com/qIWCdLKv28

— Jessica Meir (@Astro_Jessica) April 14, 2020

The coronavirus pandemic has shifted the normal routine for the returning space crews.

They had taken off from earth at the time when handshakes, hugs and international flights were not treated unusual and would take place in everyone’s day to day life.

"We can watch news up here, and we've been talking to friends and families to try to paint a picture," Morgan said. The trio soon got an early indication of the new world they had arrived in when they met medical experts wearing masks after landing.

The teams assigned to aid the crew were under strict quarantine and went through various tests for coronavirus to assure that they were not at risk of infecting them.

The crew boarded helicopters to Baikonur, the Russian launch site in the Kazakh steppe, post-landing medical checks. From there, Skripochka will travel to Moscow. Morgan and Meir will cover nearly 200-mile drive to the city of Kyzylorda, and then a flight back to the US.

In a press conference last week, Meir and Morgan said they were keeping up with how the virus was unfolding on Earth – “but watching from so far away, little seemed different on our planet”.

It might not be too challenging for the crew to live in isolation. Meir said the best tips for surviving long periods of isolation were ensuring daily exercise, keeping a regular schedule, treating those around with kindness and making sure to have fun.