So long and thanks for all the fish: Space hikers return home after 200 days

Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti marked today’s departure from the International Space Station with a picture of herself waving goodbye alongside the words: “So long…and thanks for all the fish!”. The quote comes from the title of the fourth book in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series by the late author Douglas Adams’ and has become a common way for sci-fi fans to say ‘goodbye’. ESA astronaut Cristoforetti, along with Commander Terry Virts from NASA and cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov are due to return from the ISS on Thursday, following an extension to their planned mission. Their return was delayed by the failure of a Russian supply ship that grounded all imminent launches.

I think that 100 years from now, 500 years from now, people will look back on this as the initial baby steps that we took going into the solar system. In the same way that we look back on Columbus and the other explorers 500 years ago, this is the way people will look at this time in history.

Astronaut Terry Virts

Virts spent the final hours of the 200-day mission by taking some spectacular pictures of the Earth below. The Expedition 43 commander shared images of the pyramids at Giza, Mount Ararat in Turkey and the coastal dunes of Namibia on Twitter as he counted down handing over control of the orbiting space station. Gennady Padalka of the Russian Federal Space Agency took command after a brief ceremony then U.S. astronaut Virts, European Cristoforetti and cosmonaut Shkaplerov sealed themselves into the Soyuz TMA-15M to prepare for their landing in Kazakhstan.

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