Three Expedition 74 crew remain on ISS after Crew-11 splashdown

Three Expedition 74 crew members continue to reside aboard the International Space Station following the return to Earth of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 mission on Thursday. NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov are back on Earth after completing 167 days in space.

The Crew-11 quartet returned in a SpaceX Dragon for a parachute-assisted splashdown off the coast of California just ten-and-a-half-hours after undocking from the station’s Harmony module. Meanwhile, NASA Flight Engineer Chris Williams, station Commander Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Flight Engineer Sergei Mikaev remain on the orbital outpost and will stay in space until summer.

The trio arrived on Thanksgiving Day last year aboard the Soyuz MS-28 spacecraft, beginning an eight-month space research mission. Onboard activities included Williams deconfiguring a pair of spacesuits in the Quest airlock, cleaning and flushing the suits’ internal water-cooling loops, powering down and inspecting the suits, and uninstalling suit hardware, components and batteries.

Mikaev installed Earth observation hardware and programmed it to photograph African landmarks from Namibia’s Namib Desert to Kenya’s Nabiyotum Crater on the southern tip of Lake Turkana, while Kud-Sverchkov serviced the Elektron oxygen generator in the Zvezda service module and documented the location of hardware stowed throughout the station’s Roscosmos segment.

Key Topics

Science, International Space Station, Spacex Dragon, Chris Williams