Observe three astronauts return to Earth in a Russian spacecraft on the morning of December 9.
Watch 3 astronauts land on Earth aboard Russian spacecraft early Dec. 9 (Image Credit: Space.com)
Three astronauts will come back to Earth early Tuesday morning (Dec. 9), and you can watch their homecoming live.
The reentry and landing livestream will begin today at 10:30 p.m. EST (0330 GMT).
If all goes to plan, the Soyuz carrying Kim and his cosmonaut colleagues will land Tuesday (Dec. 9) at 12:03 a.m. EST (0503 GMT) on the steppe of Kazakhstan, near the city of Dzhezkazgan.
Kim, Ryzhikov and Zubritsky arrived at the ISS on April 8. Their 245-day mission is the first spaceflight for Kim and Zubritsky and the third for Ryzhikov, the commander of the station’s Expedition 73 mission.
By the time they touch down on Tuesday morning, the trio will have orbited Earth 3,920 times together and traveled nearly 104 million miles (167 million kilometers), according to a NASA statement.
After Kim, Ryzhikov and Zubritsky departed the ISS, there were seven people left on board the orbiting lab — Oleg Platonov, Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Mikaev of Roscosmos; NASA astronauts Zena Cardman, Mike Fincke and Chris Williams; and Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui.
Williams, Kud-Sverchkov and Mikaev are new arrivals, reaching the station on Thanksgiving Day. Their launch was more eventful than Roscosmos officials had planned; shortly after their Soyuz rocket lifted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the pad’s service platform crashed into the flame trench.
It’s unclear how long it will take to repair that pad, which is currently the only one capable of launching Russian astronaut and cargo missions to the ISS.
Editor’s note: This story was updated at 10 p.m. ET on Dec. 8 with news of the Soyuz’s successful departure from the ISS.
