ISS Crew Waiting for Undocking and Return Home
The hatches closed between the International Space Station (ISS) and Soyuz TMA-02M at 2:41 pm EST today, and three ISS crew members now are awaiting undocking at 6:00 pm EST and landing in Kazakhstan at 9:25 pm EST tonight.
NASA astronaut Mike Fossum, Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov and Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa have been aboard the ISS since June 9. They have spent the last several days handing over operations to the Soyuz TMA-22 crew that docked with the ISS early Wednesday morning EST. Those three crew members — Dan Burbank, Anatoly Ivinishin, and Anton Shkaplerov — will be joined by three more astronauts just before Christmas, once again returning the ISS crew to full strength. Ordinarily, six crew are aboard the ISS at one time, but the crew rotation schedule was disrupted by a Russian launch failure in August.
NASA TV is providing live coverage of the undocking and landing.
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