Outgoing space station commander Sergei Prokopyev and two members of the Soyuz crew, co-pilot Dmitry Peterin and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, packed up their belongings on Tuesday and returned to Earth early Wednesday. , completing a one-year stay in orbit for 371 days (the longest flight). In U.S. Space History.
When the trio launches in September 2022, they expect to spend six months on the International Space Station, the typical mission length for long-stay crews.
However, in December last year, the ferry “Soyuz MS-22/68S” was unable to operate due to a coolant leak, and the Russian side release a replacement product — Soyuz MS-23/69S — last February. This meant that Prokopyev, Peterin and Rubio had to stay another six months to get Russia’s crew rotation schedule back on track.
If all goes well, it is scheduled to undock from the space station at 3:54 a.m. EDT on Wednesday and eventually return home. After a violent atmospheric entry, the Soyuz crew module was suspended under a large parachute and settled into a shocking touchdown near the town of Zhezkazgan, at 7:17 a.m. EDT (5:17 a.m.) It is expected to land in the steppes of Kazakhstan. local time).
In a brief change of command ceremony on Tuesday, Prokopyev, the ISS Expedition 69 commander, handed over the laboratory to European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen.
Mogensen congratulated the departing crew, saying, “You have all demonstrated resilience, professionalism and grace in the face of unexpected challenges and significant uncertainty.”
“It’s one thing to fly into space knowing you’re going to be here for a year,” he added. “Knowing at the end of a six-month mission that you’re going to spend another six months in space is a completely different thing for you and your family. But you carry that on your shoulders and you do it beautifully. I accomplished it.”
He thanked Prokopyev, Peterin and Rubio for their “competence, dedication and hard work” in keeping the station in shape and “setting us up for success” on Expedition 70 to the ISS. expressed.
“We want the space station to leave in as good a condition as when it was discovered,” Mogensen concluded. “No one deserves to go home to their families more than you. I wish you a smooth flight and a soft landing.”
Prokopyev, Peterin and Rubio will be replaced by Soyuz MS-24/70S commander Oleg Kononenko, aeronautical engineer Nikolai Chubut, and NASA astronauts who arrived at the space station on the 26th. Loral O’Hara will be appointed. September 15th.
Mogensen flew to the station August 26th He boarded SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft with NASA’s Jasmine Moghbeli, Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, and cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov.
Mr. Prokopyev, Mr. Peterin and Mr. Rubio said farewell to the station’s seven-member crew on Tuesday night, boarding the replacement ferry ship Soyuz MS-23/69S and undocking it from Russia’s multiport Pritchar module. I’m planning on waiting.
Assuming a timely landing, the crew would have logged 370 days, 21 hours and 22 minutes from the planet during a voyage spanning 5,936 orbits and 157 million miles. Prokopyev’s two flights totaled 568 days in space.
The late cosmonaut Valery Polyakov holds the world record for the longest single spaceflight, spending 438 days aboard Russia’s Mir space station in 1994-1995. Prokopyev, Peterin and Rubio will move to third place on the list after retired cosmonaut Sergei Avdeyev, who spent 380 days on Mir in 1998-1999.
The longest U.S. flight to date was carried out by Mark Vande Hei, who spent 355 days on the International Space Station in 2021-2022.