Expedition 67 Flight Engineers at Work | International Space Station

Expedition 67 Flight Engineers at Work | International Space Station

Kayla, Raja, Tom, and Matthias Arriving Back on Earth This Week

NASA and SpaceX managers continue to plan for the departure of four commercial crew astronauts aboard the International Space Station this week. A change of command is also on tap as the 11 orbital residents transition to a seven-member crew before the end of the week.

NASA astronauts Tom Marshburn, Raja Chari, and Kayla Barron, with European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Matthias Maurer are nearing the end of their space research mission that began in November. The quartet will first see Marshburn hand over station command to Roscosmos Flight Engineer Oleg Artemyev who will lead Expedition 67 until late summer. The following day, the four astronauts will enter the SpaceX Dragon Endurance, undock from the Harmony module’s forward port, then splashdown off the coast of Florida about 24 hours later.

The four departing astronauts have been handing over their responsibilities to the station’s newest quartet that arrived on April 27 aboard the Dragon Freedom. NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines, and Jessica Watkins with Samantha Cristoforetti from ESA are in the first week of a four-and-a-half-month research mission on the orbiting lab.

Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC)

Image Date: April 29, 2022

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