Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

How to watch a crewed Soyuz capsule head home from ISS this week

Trevor Mogg
By
NASA Live: Official Stream of NASA TV

The International Space Station (ISS) is currently experiencing a very busy period for crew rotation.

Having recently welcomed one American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts who arrived on a Soyuz spacecraft, the orbital facility is now preparing to bid farewell to three cosmonauts.

After that, SpaceX’s four-person Crew-5 team will arrive for a six-month stay. Poor weather conditions at the launch site in recent days has interrupted Crew-5’s preparations for launch, which had been set for Monday, October 3. NASA said on Sunday that it will reschedule the Crew-5 mission in the coming days.

Related

Also, at some point in the next week or so, three NASA astronauts and another from the European Space Agency — who make up SpaceX’s Crew-4 team — will depart the ISS aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft after spending six months in space. A specific date has yet to be confirmed for Crew-4’s homecoming.

But first, as we mentioned at the top, Expedition 67 Commander Oleg Artemyev of Roscosmos, along with fellow cosmonauts Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov, will climb aboard the Soyuz MS-21 spacecraft for their ride back to Earth on Thursday, September 29.

NASA will broadcast a livestream of the spacecraft’s undocking from the station’s Prichal module and also show the early stages of the journey home as the capsule edges away from the ISS. It will also livestream the trio landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan about 1,350 miles southeast of Moscow.

The Soyuz MS-21 crew ship shown docked to the Prichal docking module on the ISS.
From bottom to top, the Soyuz MS-21 crew ship is docked to the Prichal docking module, which is also attached to the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module. NASA

How to watch

The Soyuz spacecraft will depart the space station at 3:34 a.m. ET (12:34 a.m. PT/7:34 a.m. GMT) on Thursday, September 29.

The spacecraft’s parachute-assisted landing will take place in Kazakhstan around four hours later at 6:57 a.m. ET (3:57 a.m. PT/7:57 a.m. GMT).

Coverage will begin at 3:15 a.m. ET (12:15 a.m. PT/7:15 a.m. GMT). You can watch it via the video player at the top of this page, or by visiting NASA’s YouTube channel. NASA personnel will also offer commentary, giving viewers a full understanding of all of the procedures taking place during the homecoming mission.

The departure and landing is early (or late!) for those in the U.S., but the stream will remain online and so can also be viewed after the event.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
New Russian Soyuz craft arrives at space station to replace leaky one
The Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft is seen approaching the Poisk module of the space station prior to docking at 7:58 p.m. EST as the space station was flying 260 miles above northern Mongolia.

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft has docked at the International Space Station (ISS), ready to take astronauts back to Earth and act as a replacement for another Soyuz that sprang a leak last year. The three affected crew members, NASA's Frank Rubio and Roscosmos's Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, will now travel home in this replacement spacecraft later in the year.

The unusual situation of a crewless crew vehicle traveling to the ISS occurred due to a leak that happened in December 2022, when video footage showed liquid spraying out of the MS-22 Soyuz craft that was docked with the ISS. Investigations showed that the leak occurred in the coolant system, which is important for controlling temperatures as the spacecraft travels through Earth's atmosphere and generates heat. When NASA and Roscosmos looked into the issue, they decided it would be unsafe for astronauts to travel in the MS-22 that had lost its coolant as interior temperatures could get too high for human safety.

Read more
The science experiments that the Crew-6 astronauts will be performing on the ISS
In the Neutral Buoyancy Lab at Johnson Space Center, NASA astronaut Victor Glover tests collection methods for ISS External Microorganisms, which examines microbes released from the space station to help limit contamination on future exploration missions.

On Monday, NASA and SpaceX will launch four new crew members to the International Space Station (ISS) as part of the Crew-6 mission.

During their six-month stay on the ISS, NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren “Woody” Hoburg, plus UAE astronaut Sultan Alneyadi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, will work on tasks like upgrading the ISS systems and performing maintenance. But they will also perform scientific research in the microgravity environment of the station, working on a wide variety of experiments.

Read more
Watch NASA’s trailer for SpaceX’s Crew-6 astronaut launch
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Crew-4 astronauts launching from the Kennedy Space Center.

NASA and SpaceX are making their final preparations for the first crewed launch from U.S. soil to the International Space Station (ISS) since October 2022.

Traveling aboard the Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft early on Monday will be NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg, United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.

Read more