Three astronauts will head back to Earth from the International Space Station tonight (Dec. 8), and you can watch their homecoming live.
NASA’s Jonny Kim and Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky of the Russian space agency Roscosmos are scheduled to leave the orbiting lab in a Soyuz spacecraft today at 8:41 p.m. EST (0141 GMT on Dec. 9) and touch down about 3.5 hours later.
You can watch the action live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly via the space agency.
Tune in today as live coverage kicks off at 4:45 p.m. EST (2145 GMT), offering a unique opportunity to witness a critical moment in space operations. The broadcast will document the closing of the hatches between the Soyuz spacecraft and the International Space Station (ISS), an event anticipated to take place approximately 5:10 p.m. EST (2210 GMT).
The webcast will pick up again at 8:15 p.m. EST (0115 GMT) for undocking, then again at 10:30 p.m. EST (0330 GMT) for deorbit and landing coverage.
The Soyuz spacecraft, transporting Kim and his fellow cosmonauts, is on schedule for a predawn landing early Tuesday, December 9. If the mission proceeds without a hitch, the capsule is expected to touch down at precisely 12:04 a.m. EST (0504 GMT) in the vast Kazakh steppe, close to 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 depart, there will be seven people left on board the ISS — 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.
