One NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts undocked from the International Space Station and returned to Earth early Wednesday morning after a yearlong stay in space — the longest single flight in U.S. space history.

NASA flight engineer Frank Rubio, commander Sergey Prokopyev, and co-pilot Dmitri Petelin left the station at 3:54 a.m. EDT in the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft. The trio arrived on the steppe of Kazakhstan at 7:17 a.m. EDT with a parachute-assisted landing — bringing an end to their unexpectedly extended stay in space, NASA announced.

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"Everybody did really well," Rubio said. "It's good to be home."

Rubio arrived at the International Space Station on Sept. 21, 2022, and spent 371 days in space. He broke the previous record held by NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei by 16 days.

During his time aboard the station, Rubio completed approximately 5,936 orbits of Earth and traveled approximately 157,412,306 statute miles — the latter equivalent to 328 round trips to the moon and back.

Rubio, a father of four children, said upon his return that "hugging my wife and kids is going to be paramount. And I'll probably focus on that for the first couple days."

"We're blessed enough to have kind of a quiet backyard," he added. "And I think just going out in the yard and enjoying the trees and the silence. Up here, we kind of have the constant hum of machinery. ... So I'm looking forward to just being outside and enjoying the peace and quiet."

All three men spent about two hours per day exercising to stay in the best shape possible, but Rubio said it would likely take several months to get their land legs back as they begin readjusting to Earth's gravity.

"Your vestibular system is probably the most affected," Rubio said. "And then after that, really, it's a couple of months to regain your strength. Our trainers do a great job of keeping us in shape up here. But the reality is we're not standing, we're not walking, we're not bearing our own weight."

"And so it just takes some time to get your bones and your muscles used to doing that consistently back on Earth. So it'll be anywhere from two to six months before I essentially say that I feel normal," he continued.

Following landing, the Soyuz crew was expected to fly to the city of Karaganda, where Rubio would board a NASA Gulfstream jet and head home to the U.S. at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Prokopyev and Petelin were flown to Star City near Moscow aboard a Russian jet, CBS News reported.

The crew was expected to only stay at the International Space Station for six months, the normal tour of duty for long-duration crews. However, a coolant leak disabled their spacecraft in December, prompting the Russians to send a replacement — the Soyuz MS-23 — in February.

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On Tuesday during a change-of-command ceremony, Prokopyev turned the station manager position over to European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen.

Prokopyev, Petelin, and Rubio will be replaced by Mogensen, NASA astronauts Loral O'Hara and Jasmin Moghbeli, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko, Konstantin Borisov, and Nikolai Chub. The crew arrived at the space station on Sept. 15 for Expedition 70, according to NASA.