SpaceX’s four Crew-6 astronauts are expected to depart the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday after four months living and working on the orbital laboratory.
Heading home aboard a Crew Dragon capsule will be NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg, United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Al Neyadi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.
The mission was the fourth spaceflight for Bowen, who participated in space shuttle missions STS-126 in 2008, STS-132 in 2010, and STS-133 in 2011, and the first for Hoburg, Al Neyadi, and Fedyaev.
Following the arrival of the four Crew-7 members on Sunday, the crew count aboard the ISS grew to 11. That’s a lot of people in a facility that NASA says is around the size of a six-bedroom house, though in the past it’s hosted as many as 13. The usual crew count for the ISS is around six or seven.
The Crew-6 members are currently finishing up handover activities, which involve finishing off a number of science experiments and moving return cargo to the outgoing Crew Dragon, which has been docked with the ISS since the astronauts’ arrival in March.
Al Neyadi’s six months aboard the ISS marked the longest space trip by an Arab to date, and he also became the first Arab to perform a spacewalk. The Emirati regularly posted on X, which was called Twitter when he left Earth six months ago, keeping his followers back on terra firma up to date with his life in orbit.
Below are some of Al Neyadi’s best posts shared during his final month aboard the station:
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