This evening, three astronauts who have been living on board the International Space Station for the last six months will return back to Earth in a Russian Soyuz capsule, landing in the middle of the Kazakhstan desert. The trio have lived in space for nearly the entirety of the COVID-19 pandemic and are now returning as cases are rising again across the world.
NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Ivan Vagner and Anatoly Ivanishin launched to the ISS on the Soyuz back in early April, nearly a month after the World Health Organization had declared that the COVID-19 outbreak had become a pandemic. Thanks to the outbreak, the crew underwent a stricter quarantine than usual before they took off. Cassidy said he remained mostly…