Commander Kondratyev and crewmates Paolo Nespoli and Catherine Coleman landed back on Earth, 24 May 2011, to conclude his 159-day mission to the International Space Station. Paolo had been serving as the flight engineer for Expeditions 26 and 27 since December.

Paolo’s MagISStra mission, the third long mission by a European astronaut on the Station, came to end at 04:27 CEST (02:27 GMT) on the steppes of Kazakhstan as the Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft fired its retrorockets for a soft landing.