WATCH: Astronauts Tim Peake, Tim Kopra And Yuri Malenchenko Land On Earth, Welcome Home!

Three crew members from the International Space Station (ISS) landed back on Earth's surface at 5:15 a.m. EDT on June 18. The landing wrapped up the astronauts' 186 day mission onboard the space laboratory, where they conducted and took part in numerous experiments and activities. The astronauts from Expedition 47, comprising of Commander Tim Kopra of NASA, flight engineer Tim Peake of European Space Agency (ESA) and Soyuz Commander Yuri Malenchenko of Roscosmos touched down at a remote Kazakhstan town.

The journey back to our planet's surface was reportedly made on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, especially designed to endure the extreme heat created on re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. The return journey of the trio of astronauts took around six hours, from undocking of the spacecraft from the space station to the touchdown in Kazakhstan.

It will take a considerable amount of time for the trio to get used to the atmosphere and gravitational pull of the Earth, after living in space's zero gravity and its associated weightlessness for nearly six months. Astronauts generally suffer Entry Motion Sickness (EMS), low blood pressure and ultra sensitive skin once they are back on Earth, with related symptoms like headache, dizziness, pallor sweating, nausea and vomiting. In addition, sometimes a simple process like talking can become somewhat of an ordeal as the tongues and lips too get used to zero gravity.

During their time on the orbiting lab, the astronauts conducted many research studies involving microbiome, salivary markers, cognition and ocular health which have many positive implications for the future, both for the treatment of patients suffering from related medical conditions to preparing future human space explorations, like the journey to Mars. The three, now, ex-members also saw the arrival of the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) to the ISS, and its consequent attachment and expansion, during their service time. Kopra and Peake also performed spacewalks for maintenance purpose related to the space lab.

Currently, the space station is being manned by members of Expedition 48 comprising of Jeff Williams, Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin. On July 6, the members of Expedition 49 will join the present members in their new space habitat. The next crew will comprise of Kate Rubins, Anatoly Ivanishin and Takuya Onishi. Incidentally, at a time the space station usually has a maximum crew of six members.