International Space Station Expedition 35 Crew Return to Earth Tonight: Watch Live on NASA TV

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, Expedition 35 commander, poses in his Russian Sokol spacesuit while preparing for a May 13, 2013 landing on a Soyuz spacecraft.

CREDIT: Canadian Space Agency/Chris Hadfield

After months living in space, two astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut will return home from the International Space Station tonight (May 13) and you can watch their landing live online.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, American astronaut Tom Marshburn and cosmonaut Roman Romanenko are preparing to leave the space station aboard a Russian-built Soyuz spacecraft for a planned landing at 10:31 p.m. EDT (0231 May 14 GMT) on the Central Asian steppes of Kazakhstan, where the local time will be early Tuesday morning.

You can watch the Soyuz landing webcast live on NASA TV. The webcast will begin at 6:45 p.m. EDT (2245 GMT) to show the Soyuz departing the space station.

The Soyuz landing will mark the end of the station's Expedition 35 mission, which Hadfield commanded, and comes just two days after an emergency spacewalk on Saturday (May 11) by Marshburn and NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy to fix a serious ammonia coolant leak on the station.

The leak was detected on Thursday (May 9), forcing Mission Control and the astronauts to come up with the impromptu spacewalk plans in record time.

"The real-time execution of that is what made me feel so good as a commander of this crew," Hadfield said Sunday (May 13) as he handed command over to Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov, who will lead the station's Expedition 36 mission.

Vinogradov will remain behind on the space station with Cassidy and fellow Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin. They will be joined by three new crewmembers in late May.

Hadfield, Marshburn and Romanenko are wrapping up a five-month mission to the space station that began in December.

They launched as part of the station's Expedition 34 crew, with Hadfield taking command of the Expedition 35 mission midway through the flight.

Canadian Astronaut and ISS Cmdr, Chris Hadfield Prepares to Return to Earth - Video

Canadian Astronaut and ISS Cmdr Hadfield’s charm and easy way with the camera are not the whole story behind his popularity. Long before setting off on this expedition to the space station, officials at the Canadian Space Agency were preparing him for fame.

Recognising his ability to explain complex issues easily, they gave him a video camera several years ago and asked him to begin practicing with it through his training.

Since he has been at the space station, a team back in Quebec have been dreaming up ideas for him to talk about, experiments for him to perform and writing scripts for the dozens of videos he has produced.

A professional editing team have polished the footage he has sent back, setting his antics to zany music and with fun graphics.

His final video dispatch from the Space Station (shown above) was a cover of the David Bowie song Space Oddity.

The music video, believed to be the first filmed in space, shows Cmdr Hadfield floating through various parts of the space station and playing his guitar along to a backing track.


Together, what Cmdr Hadfield and his team have achieved is to bring the space station alive for those back on Earth.

They have transformed the ISS from being a sprawling £84 billion laboratory where just an elite few who travel, into a place of wonderment – a playground where all the things we take for granted can be turned on their head.

Being able to share in just a part of that through Cmdr Hadfield’s videos has somehow helped to make the enormous building and running costs of the space station easier to swallow.

It has given the world the chance to be part of something very special.