ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli landed back on Earth this morning to conclude his 159-day mission to the International Space Station.br Paolo had been serving as the flight engineer for Expeditions 26 and 27 since December. Paolo’s MagISStra mission, the third long mission by a European astronaut on the Station, came to end at 04:27 CEST (02:27 GMT) on the steppes of Kazakhstan as the Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft fired its retrorockets for a soft landing.br Paolo and crewmates Soyuz Commander Dmitri Kondratyev and NASA's Cady Coleman boarded the Soyuz on Monday night and undocked from the Station’s nadir Rassvet port at 23:35 CEST (21:35 GMT).