19 Apr 2025

NASA’s live departure coverage is underway on NASA+. Learn how to stream NASA content through a variety of platforms, including social media.

NASA astronaut Don Petitt and Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner will close the hatch between the Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft and the International Space Station about 2:25 p.m. EDT.

The spacecraft will undock from the orbiting laboratory’s Rassvet module at 5:57 p.m. to begin the journey back to Earth, heading for a parachute-assisted landing at 9:20 p.m. (6:20 a.m. Kazakhstan time, Sunday, April 20) on the steppe of Kazakhstan, southeast of the town of Dzhezkazgan.

NASA will provide live undocking coverage at 5:30 p.m. on NASA+.

Spanning 220 days in space, Pettit and his crewmates will have orbited the Earth 3,520 times and completed a journey of 93.3 million miles over the course of their mission. The Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft launched and docked to the station on Sept. 11, 2024.

This was Pettit’s fourth spaceflight, where he served as flight engineer for Expedition 71 and 72. He has a career total of 590 days in orbit. Ovchinin completed his fourth flight in space, totaling 595 days, and Vagner has earned an overall total of 416 days in space during two trips to the orbiting laboratory.

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Soyuz MS-26 crew members (from left) NASA astronaut Don Pettit and Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner pose for a portrait at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Russia. Credit: GCTC