___ (1) Saturday, three members of the Expedition 64 team landed safely back ___ (2) solid ground after ending their mission on the International Space Station. They landed ___ (3) Kazakhstan.
The team ended a 185-day mission spanning 2,960 orbits of Earth and 126 million kilometers, and they were lifted out of the spacecraft before medical examinations were made. Flight Engineer and microbiologist Kate Rubins of NASA and two of Russia´s Roscosmos cosmonauts were on the Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft that unlocked from the space station, and parachuted on entry into Earth´s atmosphere. After the 408-kilometer journey home, it landed on the steppe of Kazakhstan, southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan.
This was the second flight for Rubins who became the first person to sequence DNA in space in 2016.
Adapted from: https://www.newsinlevels.com/products/astronauts-come-back-level-3/
In “… and they were lifted out of the spacecraft…”, the word “they” refers to