3 ISS Crew Members to Return
Three crew members from the International Space Station (ISS) will return to earth early Friday (12/11) morning. After 141 days in space NASA’s Kjell Lindgren, Russian Federal Space Agency’s Oleg Kononenko, and Japanese Aerospace Exploriation Agency’s Kimiya Yui are expected to land their Soyuz spacecraft Friday. The spacecraft will undock from the ISS at 4:49 am EST, enter the Earths’ atmosphere at 7:46 am EST and land northeast of Dzhezkazgen, Kazakhstan at 8:12 am EST.
The event schedule from NASA is below and you can begin viewing the undocking and landing at 1am EST here: http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv
EST EVENT
1:00 a.m. NASA TV: Expedition 45 farewell & hatch closure coverage
1:25 a.m. Soyuz TMA-17M/space station hatch closure
4:30 a.m. NASA TV: Expedition 45 Soyuz TMA-17M undocking coverage
4:48 a.m. Soyuz undock command sent
4:49 a.m. Soyuz TMA-17M undocks from space station
4:52 a.m. Soyuz manual separation burn
7:00 a.m. NASA TV: Expedition 45 Soyuz TMA-17M deorbit burn and landing coverage
7:19 a.m. Soyuz TMA-17M deorbit burn (4 minutes, 41 seconds duration)
7:46 a.m. Soyuz module separation (altitude 87 miles)
7:49 a.m. Soyuz atmospheric entry (altitude 62 miles)
7:57 a.m. Command to open parachute (6.7 miles)
8:12 a.m. Expedition 45 Soyuz TMA-17M landing northeast of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan
NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian Federal Space Agency’s Mikhial Kornienko and Sergey Volkov will stay and operate the ISS, until new crew members arrive. That will happen in 4 days on Dec. 15th when NASA astronaut Tim Kopra, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and Tim Peake of ESA (European Space Agency) will arrive.
