NASA astronaut and Expedition 48 Commander Jeff Williams, KD5TVQ returned to Earth Tuesday after his USA record-breaking mission aboard the International Space Station. Williams, Ovchinin, and Skripochka are returning after 172 days in space where they served as members of the Expedition 47 and 48 crews onboard the International Space Station.
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The capsule should fire its engines for a de-orbit burn by 8:21 p.m., and the ISS crew members should be back on Earth by 9:14 p.m., NASA said.
This was the first space flight for Ovchinin, second for Skripochka and fourth for Williams. Prior to leaving the station, Williams formally turned over command of the ISS to Anatoly Ivanishin of Russian Federation.
Williams may hold the USA record for time in orbit, but Russia’s Gennady Padalka still holds the record for the person with the most cumulative days in space at 879.
That’s how much time veteran NASA astronaut Jeff Williams has spent in space throughout his career, longer than any other American astronaut in history.
Jeff Williams, front left, Oleg Skripochka, front center, and Soyuz TMA-20M commander Alexey Ovchinin, front right, hand over the station to their Soyuz MS-01 crewmates during a change-of-command ceremony Monday. Among the highlights of Williams’ tour of duty were two spacewalks that he conducted with NASA’s Kate Rubins over the past three weeks.
“You really did much to ensure success of the expedition”, said Anatoly Ivanishin, commander of Expedition 49.
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Nasa astronaut Jeff Williams (pictured being carried by crew in Kazakhstan this morning) first blasted into space aboard the shuttle Atlantis in 2000. This is not the first time that NASA has been accused of doing something like that, as the space agency has been accused several times in the past to intentionally hide evidence of steps that alien life take to encroach Earth. “Their return will wrap up 172 days in space for the crew since their launch in March 2016”. The ISS crew complement will return to its usual six later this month after the September 23 EDT launch of Soyuz MS-02. It will take Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrei Borisenko, and USA astronaut Robert S. Kimbraugh to space.
