Crews Change Command on Tuesday; Leak Temporarily Sealed

The sun's first rays burst over the Earth's horizon during an orbital sunrise as the International Space Station orbited above the Indian Ocean southwest of Australia.
The sun’s first rays burst over the Earth’s horizon during an orbital sunrise as the International Space Station orbited above the Indian Ocean southwest of Australia.

Two veteran International Space Station residents will have a Change of Command ceremony on Tuesday before the Expedition 63 crew returns to Earth the following day. Meanwhile, the Russian portion of the crew has temporarily sealed a leak on the orbiting lab.

Commander Chris Cassidy of NASA will hand over control of the space station to cosmonaut Sergey Ryzhikov on Tuesday. The duo will be joined by the rest of their crewmates for the traditional event live on NASA TV starting at 4:15 p.m. EDT.

Cassidy will spend one more night in space with Flight Engineers Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner before departing the station on Wednesday inside the Soyuz MS-16 crew ship. They will undock from the Poisk module at 7:32 p.m., re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere just over three hours later and parachute to a landing in Kazakhstan at 10:55 p.m. (Oct. 22, 7:55 a.m. Baikonur time). All the activities will be broadcast live on NASA TV.

Expedition 64 officially begins when Cassidy undocks with his two Russian crewmates. New station Commander Ryzhikov will stay in space until April with Flight Engineers Kate Rubins of NASA and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov of Roscosmos.

Russian crew members were able to temporarily seal the air leak teams have been investigating aboard the station. The leak, which has been investigated for several months, continues to pose no immediate danger to the crew at the current leak rate. Roscosmos engineers are working with the station crew to develop a forward plan to permanently seal the suspected leak location.

5 thoughts on “Crews Change Command on Tuesday; Leak Temporarily Sealed”

  1. Blessings to all of you!

    Looking forward to seeing you over Eureka, Calif. soon (hopefully we have a clear sky!)

  2. Anxiously following you and your valuable efforts up there. every night watching the sky to see you passing overhead and share my excitement with your lovers in Iran.
    Wishing you all a glorious future.

  3. I am fascinated by the ISS, the astronauts and cosmonauts who travel back and forth and the rockets and capsules that make this happen.

  4. Thanks to all the international astronaut engineers and scientists. You have been very brave to put your lives at risk for a better tomorrow for future generations. I wish all your scientific experiments full success. Hope our grand children will be able use a mobile app to book a flight to another inhabited object in space. Happy and successful time to Exp 64 crew and welcome back Exp 63 crew.

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