Soyuz crew flies home as SpaceX gears up for Crew Dragon flight to space station

Two cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut undocked from the Worldwide Space Station and plunged back to Earth early Saturday, landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan amid preparations in Florida for start of an additional station-sure crew Thursday aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft.

With Russian restoration forces and NASA support staff standing by, the Soyuz spacecraft’s central crew module, descending underneath a single orange-and-white parachute, settled to an on target rocket-assisted landing at 12:55 a.m. EDT (10:55 a.m. community time) to close out a 185-working day mission.

Soyuz MS-17/63S commander Sergey Ryzhikov, flight engineer Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and NASA astronaut Kate Rubins waved, smiled broadly and significant-fived assist crews as they were being carried from the capsule to close by recliners for quick professional medical checks and satellite cellular phone calls dwelling to friends and loved ones.

“It was great!” Rubins, a space veteran, exclaimed soon after her next Soyuz re-entry.

At the Kennedy Room Centre in Florida, in the meantime, SpaceX engineers readied a Falcon 9 rocket for a to start with stage motor examination firing early Saturday to established the phase for start Thursday on a flight to ferry two NASA astronauts, a Frenchman and a Japanese astronaut to the room station for their very own 6-thirty day period keep.

The four “Crew-2” astronauts flew to the Florida spaceport Friday afternoon to put together for flight.

“It is magnificent getting at Kennedy House Centre, especially on launch 7 days,” Crew-2 commander Shane Kimbrough advised reporters at the runway. “It can be undoubtedly getting genuine. Our crew is extremely properly qualified (and) we are actually fired up and ready to go.”

The Soyuz landing and Crew Dragon start are the next and third flights in a report four-mission sequence in excess of just a few weeks to swap the station’s entire 7-member crew following lengthy-period stays in orbit.

It began on April 9 when Soyuz MS-18/64S commander Oleg Novitskiy, Pyotr Dubrov and NASA’s Mark Vande Hei blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, docking at the station immediately after a two-orbit rendezvous.

They have now changed Ryzhikov, Kud-Sverchkov and Rubins, who had been introduced to the orbital outpost final October. Immediately after a 6-working day handover, the outgoing trio bid their station crewmates farewell and undocked from the lab advanced at 9:34 p.m. Friday

A 4-moment 39-2nd rocket firing slowed the ship plenty of to drop out of orbit and 50 minutes later on, the descent module landed as prepared around the town of Dzhezkazgan.

Russian helicopters had been standing by to ferry the crew to Karaganda. From there, Ryzhikov and Kud-Sverchkov prepared to board a Russian jet for a flight again to Star City around Moscow when Rubins headed residence to Houston aboard a NASA plane.

With the Soyuz crew securely back on Earth, NASA and SpaceX engineers are urgent ahead with function to ready the Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft for start Thursday.

It will be the third piloted start to orbit from U.S. soil due to the fact the shuttle program’s final flight in 2011 and the first showcasing a beforehand flown first-stage booster and Crew Dragon ferry ship.

Following Saturday’s engine examination firing, Kimbrough, McArthur, Pesquet and Hoshide approach to strap in early Sunday for a dress rehearsal countdown to operate by way of start-working day procedures.

Liftoff is scheduled for 6:11 a.m. Thursday, placing up a docking at the place station Friday early morning.

Kimbrough and his crew will be welcomed aboard the lab by house station commander Shannon Walker and fellow Crew Dragon astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, together with Novitskiy, Dubrov and Vande Hei.

Soon after a weeklong handover to help familiarize their replacements with station operations, the Crew-1 astronauts will depart, riding their SpaceX capsule to a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico south of Tallahassee, Florida, close to 12:40 p.m. on April 28.

And with that, NASA and the Russian room company Roscosmos will have replaced the station’s seven crew users with two launches and two landings in considerably less than one thirty day period, a document speed for the space station method.