It wasn't quite to infinity and beyond, but a Buzz Lightyear action figure is returning to earth from a 468 day space mission on the international space station.

The 12 inch toy was taken to the ISS in May 2008 and has since then been used to film a number of videos for a children's space education program.

A NASA spokesman said the toy had kept a "relatively low profile" but clips have shown the Toy Story star floating weightlessly around the station, bumping of walls.

But today Buzz is due to return to earth on board space shuttle Discovery as the longest-tenured crew member in space.

He will have spent 467 days in space beating Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov who spent 437 days on board the Mir space station in 1994... of course he was actually human.