On Sept. 23 at 4:37 a.m. ET, Soyuz MS-25 is expected to undock from the International Space Station.
On Monday, September 23, two record-breaking Russian cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut will make their way down to Earth. You can watch their homecoming live.
On Monday at 4:37 a.m. EDT (0837 GMT), Russia’s Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft carrying Tracy C. Dyson, Oleg Kononenko, and Nikolai Chub is set to undock from the International Space Station (ISS) and land on the steppe of Kazakhstan around 3.5 hours later.
“NASA will stream live coverage of the entire event on Space.com and through its official channels.”
Beginning today, September 22, at 10:15 a.m. EDT (1415 GMT), NASA will broadcast the ceremony for the change-of-command, which will signal the conclusion of Expedition 71 and the start of Expedition 72 in the orbiting lab.
NASA Drops ESCAPADE from Debut New Glenn Mission
Suni Williams, a NASA astronaut, will receive the keys to the International Space Station from Kononenko, who leads Expedition 71. She and colleague NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore boarded Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft in June to stay for a week, but they will be residing on the International Space Station (ISS) until February 2025 due to Starliner’s unmanned return to Earth due to technical issues.
When the hatches between MS-25 and the ISS close, which is anticipated to happen at 1:05 a.m. EDT (0505 GMT), NASa’s coverage will resume on Monday at 12:45 a.m. EDT (0445 GMT). The program will resume for the undocking at 4 a.m. EDT (0800 GMT) and the Soyuz’s deorbit burn, entry, and landing at 6:45 a.m. EDT (1045 GMT).
According to NASA officials, if all proceeds as planned, the spacecraft will land southeast of the town of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan around 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT).
In March, Dyson, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, and Belarusian spaceflight participant Marina Vasilevskaya arrived at the station on board Soyuz MS-25. NASA officials estimate that Dyson’s current mission on the orbiting lab will last 184 days.
Polaris Dawn astronauts accomplish the first-ever commercial spacewalk
After spending just 12 days in orbit, Novitskiy and Vasilevskaya returned to Earth in April with NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara onboard the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft. In September 2023, Soyuz MS-24 lifted off, delivering O’Hara, Kononenko, and Chub to the International Space Station.
The duration of Kononenko and Chub’s stay on the ISS is expected to surpass the previous record of 374 days, as stated by representatives of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos. Frank Rubio of NASA, along with cosmonauts Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin, held the previous record for the longest duration aboard the ISS, which was around 371 days, from September 2022 to September 2023.
Currently, Kononenko is the record holder for the longest duration in space. NASA estimates that by the time his mission concludes, he will have spent 1,111 days in orbit.
This news was published on Space
SpaceX Challenges $633K FAA Fine, Points to ‘Systematic Issues’ with the Agency
Historical Finding: NASA Discovers the Closest Supermassive Black Hole Pair As Twin Titans Collide
