U.S. astronaut Mark Vande Hei and two Russian cosmonauts have returned to Earth on Wednesday after spending a record 355 days at the International Space Station (ISS). The American space explorer clocked the single longest spaceflight by a NASA astronaut in mid-March after breaking the previous record, held by retired NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, by 15 days, NASA said in a statement. Vande Hei, 55, landed in Kazakhstan at approximately 7:30 a.m. ET alongside Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov, who also spent the past year in space. “Beautiful out here,” Vande Hei said upon landing in a Russian Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft, which undocked from the ISS at 3:21 a.m. ET on Wednesday. The spacecraft landed upright but a strong wind pulled the parachute, resulting in the capsule ending up on its side after touchdown. A recovery team helped the trio emerge from the Soyuz in the open Kazakh steppes in …