Three ISS crew members scheduled to return to Earth

Three members of the crew currently aboard the International Space Station (ISS) are scheduled to return to Earth on Friday, September 16, the Russian mission control center said.

The Soyuz TMA-21 spacecraft with ISS crewmembers Andrei Borisenko, Alexander Samokutyayev and Ron Garan was originally scheduled to land on September 8, but the abortive launch of a Progress transport ship on August 24 forced the rescheduling.

"The Soyuz TMA-21 is scheduled to undock from the ISS at 04:38 a.m. Moscow time (00:38 GMT) on Friday and land at 08:00 a.m. some 147 kilometers east of the city of Dzhezkazgan (Kazakhstan). This data is preliminary," spokesman for the mission control center said.

There is a currently a crew of six aboard the ISS: aside from Borisenko, Samokutyayev and Garan, they are Sergei Volkov of Russia, Michael Fossum of the U.S., and Satoshi Furukawa of Japan. The three remaining astronauts are scheduled to return in mid-November.