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Commander Ovchinin hands over control of ISS to ESA astronaut Parmitano

The transfer of command is an official ceremony at the ISS, in which two commanders sign documents and the expedition number is also changed

The International Space Station (ISS)
NASA

The International Space Station (ISS)

MOSCOW, October 2. /TASS/. Commander Alexey Ovchinin handed over control of the International Space Station (ISS) to astronaut Luca Parmitano of ESA (European Space Agency) in the change of command ceremony, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said in a statement on Wednesday.

Crewmates of the Soyuz MS-12 crew ship - Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Hazzaa Ali Almansoori, the first astronaut of the United Arab Emirates - are making final preparations before their return to Earth.

"Today, the crew ‘rotation’ is over. The Expedition 60 commander, cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin who headed it since June 2019, and Expedition 61 commander, astronaut Luca Parmitano, signed a change or command act," the statement says.

The transfer of command is an official ceremony at the ISS, in which two commanders sign documents and the expedition number is also changed. On Wednesday, Expedition 60 became the Expedition 61 mission. The crew celebrates the change of command by ringing a bell in the US module, Roscosmos said.

The ESA astronaut will remain commander of the Expedition 61 multinational crew until his return to Earth scheduled for February 2020.

Ovchinin, Hague and Almansoori will take the equipment and cases with results of the scientific experiments down to Earth, Roscosmos said.

The trio is scheduled to lock transition hatches between Soyuz MS-12 and the ISS at 7.20 a.m. Moscow time on October 3, to undock from the station at 10.37 a.m. Moscow time. They will parachute to landing in Kazakhstan, some 147 kilometers southeast of Zhezkazgan, at 2.00 p.m. Moscow time, the Russian space agency said.

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