MOSCOW, September 27. /TASS/. The landing capsule of the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft is scheduled to land in Kazakhstan on Wednesday afternoon, bringing two Russian cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut back to the Earth after a one-year-long mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
"Today, participants of the 68th and 69th ISS Expeditions - Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin, as well as NASA astronaut Francisco Rubio, who spent one year aboard the International Space Station, are to return to the Earth aboard the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft," the Russian space corporation said in a statement.
The spacecraft is expected to undock from the Prichal module of the ISS at 10:55 a.m. Moscow time on Wednesday and begin an autonomous flight. At approximately 1:24 p.m., the spacecraft will fire its engines for a deorbit burn.
The habitation module with removable cargo and the equipment compartment will detach from the descent capsule and subsequently burn out in the dense layers of the atmosphere. Upon its re-entry, the descent capsule will commence aeroballistic braking, creating a plasma cloud of around 2,000 degrees around it. Following its deceleration in the dense layers of the atmosphere, the descent capsule will continue its braking maneuver with the help of parachutes. The capsule will fire soft landing thrusters before it touches down.
The touchdown is expected to take place southeast of the Kazakh town of Zhezkazgan at 2:17 p.m. Moscow time. A search and rescue team will wait for the cosmonauts and the astronaut on the ground.
Record-long mission
Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio arrived at the ISS on September 21, 2022. They were initially expected to return to the Earth this spring, but their mission had to be extended until September 27 due to a coolant leak from the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft, which occurred on December 15, 2022.
In order to ensure the safe return of the two cosmonauts and one astronaut, the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft was sent to the ISS in crewless mode.
The mission of Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio will be the longest in the entire history of the ISS. The crew spent 371 days in space, which is second only to cosmonauts Valery Polyakov and Sergey Avdeyev’s space journeys aboard the Mir station. Polyakov spent 437 days on the orbit in 1994-1995, while Avdeyev - 379 days in 1998-1999.
Over the past year, Russian spacecraft docked with the ISS fired their engines 19 times to adjust the space station’s orbit. Prokopyev and Petelin performed six spacewalks, aimed primarily at upgrading the Nauka module. During their expedition, the ISS crew received 15 spacecraft, including four Progress-MS space freighters.
ISS-70 expedition and TASS correspondent on orbit
At the moment when the Soyuz MS-23 undocks from the ISS, the 70th ISS Expedition will formally begin. It comprises Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko, Nikolay Chub and Konstantin Borisov, NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara, ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen and JAXA astronaut Satoshi Furukawa.
Before his departure, Dmitry Petelin has handed over his duties as chief of the TASS news agency's office on the International Space Station (ISS) to Oleg Kononenko, the deputy head of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Center and commander of the cosmonaut squad.
Kononenko promised to report breaking news to keep the audience and readership well up on what was new on board. "Reliability and speed are the two qualities essential to doing a reporter’s job right. During my expedition, I will do my utmost to narrate the details and results of the most interesting experiments and events on board. The TASS readership will be the first to know. The news agency's space mascot Inotasya, who has traveled to the ISS with me, will be my source of inspiration," he said.