A crew of three astronauts is preparing to return to Earth early on Tuesday December 9 after completing a long mission aboard the International Space Station. NASA astronaut Jonny Kim along with Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky undocked from the station on Monday December 8 at 8:41 p.m. EST which is 0141 GMT on December 9. Their Soyuz spacecraft is expected to land about 3.5 hours later at 12:03 a.m. EST or 0503 GMT.
Viewers can watch the entire reentry and landing through a livestream hosted by NASA with coverage beginning at 10:30 p.m. EST or 0330 GMT. The landing is scheduled to take place on the steppe of Kazakhstan near the city of Dzhezkazgan.
Kim, Ryzhikov and Zubritsky reached the ISS on April 8 and have spent 245 days in orbit. This was the first spaceflight for Kim and Zubritsky and the third for Ryzhikov who served as commander of Expedition 73. By the time they land the trio will have completed 3920 orbits of Earth and travelld nearly 104 million miles which is about 167 million kilometres.
With their departure seven crew members remain on board the station. They include Roscosmos astronauts Oleg Platonov, Sergey Kud Sverchkov and Sergey Mikaev, NASA astronauts Zena Cardman, Mike Fincke and Chris Williams and Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui. Williams, Kud Sverchkov and Mikaev arrived on Thanksgiving Day but their launch was affected by an incident in which the launch pad’s service platform collapsed into the flame trench shortly after liftoff. It is not yet known how long repairs to the pad will take.
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