Soyuz MS-27 Back on Terra Firma

NASA astronaut Jonny Kim and his two Russian colleagues, Sergey Ryzhikov and Aleksey Zubritsky, have safely returned to Earth after eight months on the International Space Station. Their replacements arrived on November 27, continuing the cadence of spaceflights that have ensured permanent occupancy of the ISS for the past 25 years.

Ryzhikov, Zubritsky and Kim undocked from the ISS at 8:41:30 pm EST yesterday, December 8, and landed on the steppe of Kazakhstan near Karaganda 3.5 hours later at 12:03:33 am EST (11:03:33 pm December 8 CST in Houston). They spent 245 days in space.

Cloudy conditions at the landing site precluded live visuals of the landing on NASA’s webcast, but about 15 minutes later at 12:18 am EST (10:18 am local time at the landing site) video was finally available showing recovery teams at the capsule, which is on its side.

The Soyuz MS-27 crew launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on April 8 and docked about three hours later. This was Ryzhikov’s third spaceflight and the first for Kim and Zubritsky. Ryzhikov has accumulated 603 days in space over his three missions.

The three crew members typically are extracted from the capsule one by one and briefly sit together as a team for photos before being carried into a medical tent. Today it was below freezing with light snow falling. Ryzhikov, the commander, was first out and waited for the others, but Zubritsky, who was next, went directly to the medical tent. Kim joined Ryzhikov and then they, too, went inside.

Historically, Soyuz missions to the ISS lasted about six months, but Russian recently increased the standard duration to eight months so they could reduce the number of Soyuz launches and their associated costs.

The ISS is an international partnership among the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada, and 11 European countries operating through the European Space Agency. The Russian segment and the American segment (including modules and other critical components from Europe, Japan and Canada) are interdependent, making it essential that at least one American and one Russian are aboard at all times. Consequently, with rare exception, Russian Soyuz and NASA SpaceX Crew Dragon missions involve “crew-swaps” where an American astronaut is on every Soyuz and a Russian is on every Crew Dragon.

Seven crew members remain aboard the ISS: three who arrived on Soyuz MS-28 11 days ago and the four members of Crew-11 who arrived on Crew Dragon Endeavour in August.  NASA’s Chris Williams is on the crew of Soyuz MS-28 and Roscosmos’s Oleg Platonov is part of Crew-11.