Three astronauts left the International Space Station late yesterday as departing commander Chris Hadfield shot to internet fame with his space interpretation of a David Bowie classic.
Hadfield, who is Canadian, US flight engineer Tom Marshburn and Roman Romanenko of Russia left the ISS on board a Soyuz capsule at 2308 GMT after five months in orbit, NASA said on its website.
The capsule was scheduled to land more than three hours later at 0231 Tuesday GMT in Kazakhstan. Pavel Vinogradov of the Russian Federal Space Agency will take over as the new ISS commander.
Hadfield marked the last of his 146 days in space by posting online a performance of David Bowie’s Space Oddity. The video of Hadfield hovering in the space station with an acoustic guitar quickly gathered more than 1 million hits on YouTube by Monday evening.
Hadfield, 53, has posted regular updates and photos on his Twitter feed since his mission began in December, drawing 822,000 followers by Monday.
Two astronauts embarked on an unscheduled spacewalk at the weekend to fix an ammonia coolant leak.