NASA - Soyuz Expedition 24 crew leave the ISS

NASA - Mission Home

Commander Alexander Skvortsov and Flight Engineers Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Mikhail Kornienko are set to leave the space station in a Soyuz capsule late Thursday en route to a 12:55 a.m. EDT landing Friday in Kazakhstan.

Expedition 24 Commander Alexander Skvortsov and Flight Engineers Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Mikhail Kornienko made final preparations Wednesday for their departure from the International Space Station and their return home.

They are set to depart the station aboard their Soyuz TMA-18 spacecraft Thursday with hatch closure scheduled for 6:20 p.m. EDT, undocking at 9:35 p.m. and landing in the steppes of Kazakhstan at about 12:55 a.m. Friday.

To prepare the Soyuz for departure, Skvortsov, Kornienko and Caldwell Dyson conducted a checkout of its systems and stowed items for return to Earth.



Once they undock, Expedition 25 will begin its increment with Commander Doug Wheelock and Flight Engineers Shannon Walker and Fyodor Yurchikhin continuing their stay on the station.

Skvortsov ceremonially handed command of the station over to Wheelock on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Wheelock, Walker and Yurchikhin participated in an emergency Soyuz descent drill with Russian flight control teams to prepare for the unlikely event that they would need to evacuate the station aboard the spacecraft.

Wheelock, Walker and Caldwell Dyson also had time scheduled to relocate crew living quarters from the Japanese Kibo laboratory to the U.S. Harmony module.

ISS Russian cosmonauts Complete First Expedition 24 Spacewalk

Flight Engineers Fyodor Yurchikhin and Mikhail Kornienko concluded a six-hour, 42-minute spacewalk Tuesday at 6:53 a.m. EDT.

The cosmonauts began their spacewalk when they opened the hatches of the Pirs docking compartment at 12:11 a.m.

This was the 147th spacewalk overall in support of International Space Station assembly and maintenance.

The cosmonauts wore their Russian Orlan spacesuits to outfit the new Rassvet module for a Kurs automated rendezvous system capability for future dockings of Russian vehicles arriving at the station to link up to Rassvet. They also routed and mated Command and Data Handling cables on the Zvezda and Zarya modules.

A video camera was removed and replaced on the aft end of Zvezda then successfully tested. The old camera was safely jettisoned away from the station. The new camera will be used to provide television views of the final approach and docking of future European Automated Transfer Vehicles carrying cargo to the complex.

During the spacewalk, two objects were detected floating away from the station. One was tentatively identified as a cable clamp, left outside the station from a previous Russian spacewalk. That object and another, not conclusively identified, both departed well below the vicinity of the complex and pose no threat to the orbiting laboratory.

This was Kornienko's first spacewalk and Yurchikhin's fourth. Yurchikhin's first three spacewalks occurred when he was commander of Expedition 15 in 2007.

The second spacewalk of Expedition 24 is planned for August 5 by Flight Engineers Doug Wheelock and Tracy Caldwell Dyson in U.S. spacesuits out of the Quest airlock. They will install
a power cable to the Unity module in preparation for the installation of the Permanent Multipurpose Module during the STS-133 mission in November.

NASA ISS: Expedition 24 space walk

Expedition 24 Flight Engineer Shannon Walker works on the Smoke Aerosol Measurement Experiment inside the Microgravity Science Glovebox in the International Space Station's Columbus laboratory. Credit: NASA.

The members of the International Space Station's Expedition 24 crew shifted their sleep schedule Monday in preparation for their mission's first spacewalk, waking up at about 2:40 p.m. EDT.
Flight Engineers Fyodor Yurchikhin, a veteran of three spacewalks in 2007 during Expedition 15, and Mikhail Kornienko, a spacewalk rookie, will perform the six-hour spacewalk. The pair will exit the Pirs docking compartment and work outside the Zarya and Zvezda modules. The Pirs Docking Compartment hatch is slated to open at 11:45 p.m. to begin the excursion.

The pair will outfit the Rassvet module's Kurs automated rendezvous system, install cables and remove and replace a video camera. Kurs is a Russian radio telemetry system that allows automated dockings of unmanned spacecraft such as the Progress resupply vehicle.

The new video camera will document the rendezvous and docking of future Automated Transfer Vehicles to the aft end of the Zvezda service module.

The next spacewalk will take place Aug. 5 with Flight Engineers Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Doug Wheelock. The astronauts will exit the Quest airlock and install a Portable Data Grapple Fixture (PDGF) on the Zarya module extending the reach of Canadarm2, the station's robotic arm, and increasing a spacewalker's capabilities.