Williams and his Russian crewmates Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka, RN3FU, of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, landed in their Soyuz TMA-20M at 9:13 p.m. EDT southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan (7:13 a.m. September 7, local time).
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Expedition 49 includes Ivanishin, Rubins, and Japanese flight engineer Takuya Onishi.
The last time American astronaut Jeff Williams set foot on Earth was March 18, 2015-534 days ago.
After making sure the Soyuz TMA-20M spacecraft is ready for its descent, Ovchinin, flanked on the left by Skripochka and on the right by Williams, will oversee a computer controlled de-orbit rocket firing starting at 8:21 p.m. They and their Soyuz TMA-20M spacecraft landed in Kazakhstan at approximately 9:14 pm EDT (7:14 am Wednesday local time at the landing site) after 172 days in space.
During Jeff William’s time in the ISS, he participated in two big spacewalks recently.
Their Soyuz spacecraft made a safe parachute landing in the steppes of Kazakhstan. His first mission was aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis back in 2000, where he worked to prepare the space station for its first crew, spending just 10 days in space. He surpassed astronaut Scott Kelly’s record on August 24.
In the life of the space station, astronauts have spent a total of 1,217 hours and 34 minutes on spacewalks, according to NASA. A 30-minute show called “Space Station Live”, was organized every day for years, but now it seems that the space agency has chose to cancel the show.
During his time on the orbital complex, Williams ventured outside the confines of the space station for a second spacewalk with Rubins to retract a spare thermal control radiator and install two new high-definition cameras.
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“I appreciate, Jeff, your efforts as space station commander”, Ivanishin said during the change-of-command ceremony. The crew is set to double in size later this month when NASA’s Shane Kimbrough and Roscomos’ Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko arrive.
