Expedition 38 Crew Members Arrive Safely on Earth Ending 166-Day Mission in Orbit [VIDEO]

Three crew members from the International Space Station made a safe return to Earth Monday, wrapping their 166-day mission in space.

Expedition 38 crew members, Mike Hopkins and Sergey Ryazanskiy, flight engineers, along with Soyuz Commander Oleg Kotov, landed safely March 11 at 11.24 p.m. EDT near Dzhezkazgan, a remote town in Kazakhstan. The trio had earlier undocked from Poisk module at 8.02 p.m. EDT.

During their five and a half months stay aboard the ISS, they made 2,656 orbits around the Earth and also travelled nearly 70.5 million miles.

The expedition 38 crew members were involved in conducting several researches. They studied protein crystal growth and biological studies of plant seedling growth and also how liquid moves in microgravity. They even conducted the student experiments that looked at the celestial events in space and astronaut Hopkins undertook two spacewalks that added up to 12 hours and 58 minutes.

During the mission, Ryazanskiy worked outside the space station for 20 hours and five minutes.

The main research area during this expedition was human health management for long duration space travel. They even assisted in the launch of CubeSats, miniature satellites from the Japanese Experiment module.

Currently aboard the ISS are the Expedition 39 crew members, Commander Koichi Wakata and Flight Engineers Rick Mastracchio and Mikhail Tyurin, who are expected to stay till mid May. Wakata is the first Japanese to become the space station's commander.

 The Expedition 39 members landed on Nov 7, 2013 with the Olympic torch used to light the Olympic flame of Sochi 2014 Winter Games in February.