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Piloted spaceship Soyuz undocks from ISS

The landing is scheduled at 06:59 Moscow time (02:59 GMT)

Photo EPA

Photo EPA

KOROLEV (Moscow region), September 11 (Itar-Tass) - Three spacemen have ended a long orbital mission at the International Space Station (ISS) and have headed for the Earth. The descent capsule of the spaceship Soyuz is to land at 06:59 Moscow time (02:59 GMT) in the Kazakh steppe.

“The flight of the manned spaceship Soyuz TMA-08M, which undocked from the ISS at 03:34 Moscow time (23:34 GMT) proceeds as scheduled, the state of health of Pavel Vinogradov, Aleksander Misurkin and Christopher Cassidy is good,” the Mission Control Centre in Moscow Region told Itar-Tass.

The piloted spaceship Soyuz TMA-08M will be steered automatically for more than three hours to the designated landing site not far from the Kazakh city of Arkalyk. The Soyuz engine will begin spinning down at an altitude of about 350 kilometres 50 minutes before the landing. The spaceship will de-orbit and will begin a controllable descent to the Earth. The parachute of the descent capsule will open at an altitude of about 11 kilometres. The landing is scheduled at 06:59 Moscow time (02:59 GMT).

Fyodor Yurchikhin, Luca Parmitano and Karen Nyberg will continue their ISS mission on the orbit. Their fellow crewmen Oleg Kotov, Sergei Ryazansky and Michael Hopkins will join them already at the end of September.

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