Three crew members aboard the International Space Station are scheduled to depart the orbiting outpost Monday, April 10. Coverage of their departure and return to Earth will air on NASA Television and the agency’s website.

Expedition 50 Commander Shane Kimbrough of NASA and Flight Engineers Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko of Roscosmos will undock their Soyuz MS-02 spacecraft from the space station at 4 a.m. EDT and land in Kazakhstan at 7:20 a.m. (5:20 p.m. Kazakhstan time). Their return will wrap up 173 days in space for the crew members since their launch last October.

NASA TV will air coverage of the departure and landing activities at the following dates and times:

Sunday, April 9

10:40 a.m. – Change of command ceremony in which Kimbrough hands over station command to NASA’s Peggy Whitson
Monday, April 10

12:15 a.m. – Farewell and hatch closure coverage (hatch closure at 12:40 a.m.)
3:30 a.m. – Undocking coverage (undocking scheduled at 4 a.m.)
6 a.m. – Deorbit burn and landing coverage (deorbit burn at 6:27 a.m., landing at 7:20 a.m.)
9 a.m. – Video file of hatch closure, undocking and landing activities.
Tuesday, April 11

12 p.m. – Video file of landing and post-landing activities and post-landing interview with Kimbrough in Kazakhstan
Together, the Expedition 50 crew members continued work on hundreds of experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science aboard humanity’s only orbital laboratory.

At the time of undocking, Expedition 51 will begin aboard the station under Whitson’s command. Along with her crewmates Oleg Novitskiy of Roscosmos and Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency), the three-person crew will operate the station until the arrival of two new crew members. NASA’s Jack Fischer and Fyodor Yurchikhin of Roscosmos are scheduled to launch April 20 from Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

Keep up with the International Space Station, and its research and crews, at:

 https://www.nasa.gov/station

Get breaking news, images and features from the station on Instagram and Twitter at:

http://instagram.com/iss

and

http://www.twitter.com/Space_Station