Expedition Trio Leaves Station Begins Return to Earth

The Soyuz spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station at 9:53 p.m. EDT, carrying three people back to Earth. NASA Television will air live coverage beginning at 12 a.m. Friday, April 17, for the deorbit burn at 12:22 a.m. and the spacecraft’s parachute-assisted landing.

NASA astronauts Andrew Morgan and Jessica Meir and Oleg Skripochka are expected to land in their Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft at 1:16 a.m. on the steppe of Kazakhstan southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan (11:16 a.m. Kazakhstan time).

Among the research experiments to which the Expedition 62 crew contributed during their mission was the Droplet Formation Study, which evaluates water droplet formation, water flow and, indirectly, the perceived pressure of current shower head technology as compared to the industry-standard use of jet nozzles. The study examines droplet size and speed and how they affect the feeling of increased pressure for the end user. Another experiment to which the crew contributed was Mochii, a miniature scanning electron microscope used to conduct real-time, on-site imaging and composition measurements of particles. Analysis of small and microscopic particles is a critical need for human space exploration beyond low-Earth orbit when samples cannot be returned to Earth immediately for analysis.

Learn more about space station activities by following @space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.