Departing Russian Trio Says Farewell to Station Crew

(From left) Spaceflight participants Yulia Peresild and Klim Shipenko and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy are pictured moments before entering the Soyuz MS-18 crew ship.
(From left) Spaceflight participants Yulia Peresild and Klim Shipenko and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy are pictured moments before entering the Soyuz MS-18 crew ship.

At 4:41 p.m. EDT, the hatch closed between the Soyuz spacecraft and the International Space Station in preparation for undocking. Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy of Roscosmos, Russian actress Yulia Peresild, and Russian producer-director Klim Shipenko are scheduled to undock in the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft at 9:14 p.m.

NASA Television will air live coverage of the undocking beginning at 9 p.m.; the coverage will include a replay of hatch closure. Coverage of the Soyuz deorbit burn and landing begins at 11:15 p.m. Their landing in Kazakhstan is targeted for approximately 12:36 a.m. (10:36 a.m. Kazakhstan time) Sunday, October 17.

When the Soyuz undocks, Expedition 66 will formally begin aboard the station. Remaining aboard the orbiting outpost will be commander Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency), NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough, Megan McArthur, and Mark Vande Hei, JAXA (Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov.

Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog@space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.

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