The landing delay also gave Cristoforetti, completing her first flight, time to set a new record for the longest single mission by a female astronaut or cosmonaut. Last Sunday, she moved past NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, who logged 195 days aloft in 2006-07. Assuming an on-time touchdown, Shkaplerov will have logged 364 days in space during two flights while Virts' total, including a space shuttle flight, will stand at 212 days. image001-1.jpg The crew capsule carrying three astronauts from the space station was expected to touch down 92 miles southeast of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan. NASA After a final round of medical checks, the crew will be flown by helicopter to Karaganda for an official Kazakh welcoming ceremony. Then Shkaplerov will fly back to Star City near Moscow while Virts and Cristoforetti board a NASA jet for the long flight back to Houston and the Johnson Space Center. Padalka, Kelly and Kornienko will have the station to themselves for the next month and a half. With only three crew members on board, the pace of research will be reduced until the Soyuz TMA-17M crew arrives in late July, but Kelly said in an earlier interview he did not expect any problems conducting the ongoing medical research. Padalka, making his fifth space flight, is the first person to serve as station commander four times. He will become the world's most experienced space flier on June 28, eclipsing cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev's record of 803 days across six space flights. When he returns to Earth in September, Padalka's record will stand at 877.6 days. Because Kelly and Kornienko are spending nearly a full year in space, the Russians plan to launch a Soyuz ferry craft -- TMA-18M -- on a so-called "taxi" flight on Sept. 1 carrying commander Sergey Volkov, ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen and a yet-to-be named cosmonaut. The third seat originally was taken by singer and would-be space tourist Sarah Brightman, but she recently withdrew for undisclosed reasons. In any case, Padalka will serve as commander of Soyuz TMA-16M, the same craft that carried him into orbit, returning to Earth Sept. 11 with Mogensen and the yet-to-be-named cosmonaut. Volkov will remain aloft and serve as commander of the TMA-18M spacecraft, escorting Kelly and Kornienko home next March.