Expedition 40 members take a break in training for a crew portrait on Aug. 22, 2013. From the left are Flight Engineer Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency, Soyuz Commander Maxim Suraev of Russia's Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and Flight Engineer Reid Wiseman of NASA.
Three of the International Space Station crew members are scheduled to depart the orbiting laboratory this Sunday, November 9 after spending almost six months aboard. NASA TV will cover their return to earth, and you can watch live, online.
Expedition 41 Commander Max Suraev of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), NASA Flight Engineer Reid Wiseman and Flight Engineer Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency (ESA) will undock their Soyuz spacecraft from the station at 7:30 p.m. EST for a landing in Kazakhstan at 10:58 p.m. (9:58 a.m. Nov. 10 Kazakh time). Their return will wrap up 165 days in space since launching from Kazakhstan on May 29 and a mission that covered almost 70 million miles in orbit.
With their landing, Suraev will have spent 334 days in space on two flights, and Wiseman and Gerst will have logged 165 days in space on their first flights.
At the time of undocking, Expedition 42 will formally begin aboard the station under the command of NASA astronaut Barry Wilmore. Along with his crewmates Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova of Roscosmos, Wilmore will operate the station as a three-person crew for two weeks until the arrival of three new crew members. NASA astronaut Terry Virts, Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov and ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti are scheduled to launch from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, Nov. 23, (U.S. time).
Here's the NASA TV website, and here's more about what's next for the ISS.
