Three International Space Station residents will return to Earth this weekend just a couple of days before the expected arrival of the next SpaceX Dragon cargo mission. Soon after that, two NASA astronauts will exit the orbital outpost for a solar array maintenance spacewalk.

Veteran orbital residents Don Pettit of NASA and Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, both from Roscosmos, are winding down a seven-month space research mission that began on Sept. 11, 2024. The Earthbound crewmates are scheduled to undock from the station’s Rassvet module at 5:57 p.m. EDT on Saturday inside their Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft ending the Expedition 72 mission. They will orbit Earth twice before firing the Soyuz’ braking engines, descend into the atmosphere, then parachute to a landing in Kazakhstan at 8:20 p.m. (6:20 a.m. on Sunday, April 20, in Kazakhstan).

The trio from NASA and Roscosmos spent the first half of Wednesday reviewing the steps they will perform to ready the Soyuz spacecraft for undocking, as well as the procedures they will use once they depart the station and head back to Earth. Pettit then continued packing up his personal gear for stowage aboard the Soyuz MS-26. Ovchinin and Vagner spent the last of half of their shift handing off their mission responsibilities to the orbiting lab’s two newest cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky who arrived at the station on April 8.

Next, the new Expedition 73 crew will turn its attention to the arrival of the SpaceX Dragon cargo craft that will launch at 4:15 a.m. EDT on Monday, April 21, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Dragon will dock to the Harmony module’s space-facing port at 8:20 a.m. the following day delivering about 6,700 pounds of new science experiments and station supplies. Flight Engineers Jonny Kim of NASA and Takuya Onishi of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) trained on Wednesday for the spacecraft’s arrival and will be on duty next week monitoring Dragon’s automated approach and docking.

Just over a week after Dragon’s arrival, NASA Flight Engineers Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers will put on their spacesuits and exit the orbiting lab’s Quest airlock for a six-and-half-hour spacewalk on May 1. First, the duo will install a modification kit to prepare the port side truss structure for a new rollout solar array. Next, they will relocate an antenna that communicates with approaching and departing commercial crew and cargo spacecraft. The astronauts spent Wednesday familiarizing themselves with the spacewalking tools and parts they will use and organizing them inside Quest.

Flight Engineer Kirill Peskov spent the first portion of his day collecting air samples from the Zvezda, Zarya, and Nauka modules for analysis. Later, he focused on orbital plumbing duties transferring water between the station’s U.S. and Roscosmos segments.

Quelle: NASA