NASA and SpaceX have agreed to study the feasibility of awarding Elon Musk's company a contract to boost the Hubble Space Telescope to a higher orbit, with a goal of extending its lifespan, the US space agency said Thursday.

The renowned observatory has been operating since 1990 about 335 miles (540 kilometers) above Earth, in an orbit that slowly decays over time.

Hubble has no on-board propulsion to counter the small but still present atmospheric drag in this region of space, and its altitude has previously been restored during Space Shuttle missions.

The proposed new effort would involve a SpaceX Dragon capsule.

"A few months ago, SpaceX approached NASA with the idea for a study whether a commercial crew could help reboost our Hubble spacecraft," NASA's chief scientist Thomas Zurbuchen told reporters, adding the agency had agreed to the study at no cost to itself.

Three Russian cosmonauts touched down Thursday on the steppe of Kazakhstan following a six-month mission on the International Space Station (ISS), Russia's space agency Roscosmos said.

Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveyev and Sergey Korsakov landed at the scheduled time of 1057 GM, 148 kilometers (91 miles) southeast of the town of Zhezkazgan.

Footage broadcast by Roscosmos showed the cosmonauts being helped from the Soyuz descent module, as they become used to the effects of gravity again.

During their 195 days aboard the station, the crew completed multiple experiments and five space walks, Roscosmos said.

The three-person crew blasted off to the ISS to begin their mission in mid-March, weeks after Moscow sent troops into Ukraine starting what it called a "military operation".

In July, Roscosmos posted a photograph of the trio aboard the ISS holding flags of the Kremlin-backed breakaway Lugansk and Donetsk regions to voice support for Moscow's troops in eastern Ukraine.

Their return to Earth comes as four Moscow-held regions of Ukraine—including Lugansk and Donetsk—call on President Vladimir Putin to formally annex the territories into Russia following hastily organized votes that the West says were a sham.

In response to Russia's military campaign in Ukraine, Western capitals have hit Moscow with unprecedented sanctions, including on the aerospace industry.

CU Boulder geologist Lisa Mayhew is among the scientists working to recreate the history of an ancient landscape that wouldn't look out of place in Utah—only this terrain sits on Mars millions of miles from Earth.

Mayhew is a member of the science team for NASA's Mars 2020 mission, which is led by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in southern California. In August, she and her colleagues published some of the first sets of results from the Perseverance rover's exploration of the Red Planet.

The findings take a deep look at Jezero Crater. More than 3 billion years ago, a large asteroid struck Mars, forming this geologic feature that stretches almost 30 miles across and contains rolling sand dunes and craggy cliffs. Using a suite of scientific instruments aboard the Perseverance rover, which is about the size of an SUV, the researchers have begun to explore that landscape's past—showing how igneous rock forms the crater floor and how water reshaped the rocks during a time when a vast lake likely filled this region.

The James Webb and Hubble telescopes on Thursday revealed their initial images of a spacecraft deliberately crashing into an asteroid, marking the first time the two most powerful space telescopes have observed the same celestial object.