Washington: Three Expedition 48 astronauts safely returned to the Earth on Wednesday after completing a 172-day mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

The Soyuz TMA-20M spacecraft carrying astronaut Jeff Williams of NASA and cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka of the Russian space agency Roscosmos landed near the town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan. Veteran NASA astronaut Williams has now spent 534 days in space, making him first on the all-time NASA astronaut list.