Until the Space X's Crew Dragon entered service, crews serving on the International Space Station started and ended their journeys in Kazakhstan. When it’s time to come home, they strap in for a parachute landing in the middle of the spare and remote steppe of the central Asian country.
To bring their crew members home, a small NASA team makes the trip from Houston to Kazakhstan. NASA’s Dan Huot filmed one such trip in June 2016 when NASA’s Tim Kopra landed with British astronaut Tim Peake and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko.