NASA astronaut Jonny Kim, who was born and raised in Los Angeles, returned to Earth Tuesday after 245 days in space.
Kim and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky were part of an eight-month science mission on the International Space Station. The crew’s Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft landed Tuesday morning in Kazakhstan after departing from the ISS a day earlier.
Kim and his crewmates launched to the ISS on April 8. Over the course of their stay, they orbited Earth 3,920 times in the first space flight for Kim and Zubritsky.
Aboard the Space Station, Kim studied behavior of bioprinted tissues containing blood vessels in microgravity. The aim was to advance space-based tissue production to treat patients on Earth.
He also evaluated the remote command of robots for a study that could lead to the development of robotic assistance for future space missions and worked on development of in-space manufacturing of DNA-mimicking nanomaterials. The process could improve drug delivery tech on Earth.
The crew was set to return to a recovery staging area in Kazakhstan before Kim boards a NASA aircraft for the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Kim was selected by NASA in 2017. The former navy SEAL who completed more than 100 combat operations was born and raised in Los Angeles, the son of Korean-American immigrants.
He attended Santa Monica High School.
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