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ISS crew rest before return to Earth

The undocking is planned for 08:48 Moscow time on July 1, and the landing is planned for 12:15 Moscow time

Photo EPA/ITAR-TASS

Photo EPA/ITAR-TASS

MOSCOW, June 30 (Itar-Tass) —— The ISS crew has a day for rest this Saturday before three of them return to Earth. They are expected to sleep until the evening.

The crew had a usual working schedule before last Friday. It was changed by medical specialists before the night operations aboard the ISS to prepare for the departure.

After working till 18:00 Moscow time on the concluding working day, Russians Oleg Kononenko, Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin and Americans Donald Pettit and Joseph Acaba and Dutchman Andre Kuipers had a four-hour rest. Then, the working day continued overnight until 05:30 on Saturday morning. "Today, the united crew will sleep till 21:00 Moscow time," a source at the Mission Control Centre based near Moscow told Itar-Tass.

Of course, usually cosmonauts do not sleep so long, but they can rest or be occupied with something pleasant for psychological relaxation, the Mission Control Centre's medical group head Irina Alfyorova explained.

After getting up, ex-ISS commander Kononenko, who together with Pettit and Kuipers on Sunday will return to Earth aboard Soyuz TMA-03M, will do his exercises and conduct "Econ" ecological experiments, while his colleagues Padalka and Revin, aside from science and technical maintenance of the station, will carry equipment and experiment containers to the Soyuz.

After 03:00 a.m., the united crew will gather for the early breakfast. Then, the departing crewmembers will bring the medico-biological experiment samples kept in a refrigerator to the spacecraft and begin to unseal the Soyuz systems.

The undocking is planned for 08:48 Moscow time on July 1, and the landing is planned for 12:15 Moscow time, the Mission Control Centre said

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