A U.S.-Russian crew returned to Earth from the Worldwide Area Station early Sunday morning (July 26), after 241 days in orbit.
A Soyuz spacecraft carrying NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev of the Russian house company Roscosmos undocked from the orbiting lab on Sunday at 3:03 a.m. EDT (0703 GMT).
The Soyuz, generally known as MS-28, landed on the steppe of Kazakhstan 3 hours and 24 minutes later, at 6:27 a.m. EDT (1027 GMT).
The crew’s departure actions started on Saturday morning with a change-of-command ceremony aboard the Worldwide Area Station (ISS). Kud‑Sverchkov handed over the reins of the orbiting lab to NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, a part of the transition from ISS Expedition 74 to Expedition 75 (which formally started when Soyuz MS‑28 undocked).
The crew then gave their farewells and closed the hatches between the ISS and Soyuz MS-28 on Saturday evening.
Soyuz MS-28 launched to the ISS on Nov. 27, which was Thanksgiving Day. That liftoff kicked off the primary house mission for Williams and Mikaev and the second for Kud‑Sverchkov, who now has logged 426 days and 9 minutes in house.
The MS-28 trio orbited Earth 3,856 times and traveled a total of more than 102 million miles (164 million kilometers).
Now back on Earth, the three spaceflyers were first flown by helicopter to Karaganda, Kazakhstan, where recovery teams were based. Williams then will return to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, while Kud‑Sverchkov and Mikaev head back to their training base in Star City, Russia.
