Three crew members from the International Space Station will return to Earth Wednesday after a mission that lasted a little over five months.
American astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Skripochka and Alexander Kaleri will depart the ISS on Wednesday aboard the Soyuz TMA-01M. They are scheduled to undock from the ISS late Tuesday night and land in Kazakhstan on Wednesday at 3:53am Eastern time.
The trio is part of a team known as Expedition 26. They launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on October 7 and arrived at the ISS on October 9, 2010.
On Monday night, the crew continued packing the Kounotori2 H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV), an unmanned cargo spaceship from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The HTV arrived at the ISS in January carrying 5.3 tons of supplies. Since then, it has been filled with trash, and will be detached to burn up as it re-enters Earth's atmosphere, according to Space.com.
In the wake of the earthquake and tsunamis, however, the Tsukuba Flight Control Center has been evacuated, so no further JAXA payload operations will be conducted in the Kibo laboratory until operations are back to normal. The HTV is still scheduled to undock on March 28, but that can't happen until international cable communication between Tsukuba and Mission Control in Houston is restored, NASA said.
Flight Engineers Catherine Coleman, Paolo Nespoli, and Dmitry Kondratyev will remain aboard the station. They will eventually be joined by Ron Garan, Andrey Borisenko, and Alexander Samokutyaev. They were scheduled to leave Baikonur Cosmodrome on March 30, but that has been delayed due to electrical issues.
Commander Scott Kelly is the twin brother of astronaut Mark Kelly, who will command the space shuttle Endeavour, which is scheduled to launch from Kennedy Space Center on April 19 for a 14-day mission aboard the ISS. Mark Kelly is married to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot at an Arizona shopping mall in January. Giffords is expected to attend the Endeavour launch.
Preparation for the Endeavour launch, however, took a tragic turn this week after a veteran shuttle engineer fell from the launch pad and died. James Vanover, 53, fell around 7:40am while working on swing arms attached to the launch pad's fixed tower, Florida Today reports.