Soyuz MS-25 Crewmates Return To Earth From ISS, After Record-setting Mission

Russia's Soyuz MS-25 carrying astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson, cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub made a parachute- and braking thruster-assisted touchdown on the steppe of Kazakhstan on Monday (Sept. 23), at 1159 UTC. The capsule undocked from the International Space Station (ISS)'s Prichal node at 0836 UTC.

The trio's departure from the space station marked the official end of the orbital lab's 71st expedition and began Expedition 72.

"Oleg, we'll miss your hundreds of stories around the dinner table, but I guess that is what you get for having over a thousand days in space," said NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, who took over command of the space station from Kononenko during a handover ceremony on Sunday.

"Thanks to all my crewmates for your friendship. It has been a great time and pleasure to work and spend time together here as a big family on board the International Space Station," Kononenko said. "Right now I am leaving my second home."

With the MS-25 crewmates safely back on Earth, the three were next to fly by helicopter to the recovery staging city of Karaganda, Kazakhstan. From there, Dyson will board a NASA plane and return to Houston, U.S., while Kononenko and Chub will depart for their training base in Star City, Russia, outside of Moscow.

Kononenko, 60, and Chub, 40, completed the longest single mission stay on the ISS at 374 days. And this also marked Kononenko's record 1,111th day in space, spread over five flights.

The 60-year-old Russian is the first person in history to exceed 1,000 days off Earth. The previous record was the 878 days logged by cosmonaut Gennady Padalka over the course of five missions, as set in September 2015.

Dyson, 55, completed a 184-day mission, and together with the time she logged on two previous spaceflights, is now just one day short of tying Chub's single mission tally of 374 days (373 days, 20 hours and 13 minutes) in Earth orbit.

Kononenko and Chub's yearlong flight began with their arrival at the ISS on Soyuz MS-24 with NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara in September 2023. Rather than return to Earth with their launch-mate, the two remained on the space station to allow for a short-duration visit by spaceflight participant Marina Vasilevskaya of Belarus and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy.

Vasilevskaya and Novitskiy rode with Dyson to the ISS in March and then returned to Earth with O'Hara after just a 12-day stay in April.

During its 184 days in space, Soyuz MS-25 traveled 125.5 million kilometers while completing 2,944 Earth orbits. It was Russia's 71st Soyuz to launch for the ISS since 2000 and 154th to fly since 1967.

Remaining on the space station to begin Expedition 72 are NASA astronauts Williams, Butch Wilmore, Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, Jeanette Epps and Don Pettit, as well as cosmonauts Aleksey Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and Alexander Grebenkin.

NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov are scheduled to arrive at the station on SpaceX's Dragon "Freedom" on Thursday (Sept. 26), followed by Dominick, Barratt, Epps and Grebenkin leaving on Dragon "Endeavour" about a week later.