Soyuz MS‑28 Crew Wraps Up 241‑Day Mission, Prepares for Sunday Landing

NASA astronaut Chris Williams, together with Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud‑Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev, is set to leave the International Space Station early Sunday, July 26. The trio has been aboard the orbiting laboratory for 241 days, living and working as part of Expeditions 74 and 75. Their Soyuz MS‑28 spacecraft will undock from the Rassvet module at 3:02 a.m. EDT, heading toward a parachute‑assisted touchdown on the Kazakh steppe, southeast of Dzhezkazgan, at 6:26 a.m. EDT (3:26 p.m. local time).

During their stay, the crew completed 3,856 orbits and traveled more than 102 million miles. The flight is the first for Williams and Mikaev, and the second for Kud‑Sverchkov. Once on the ground, the crew will be flown by helicopter to the recovery hub in Karaganda; from there, Williams will travel to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, while the two cosmonauts return to Star City, Russia.

The handover of station command will take place in a ceremony earlier on Saturday, when Kud‑Sverchkov formally transfers leadership to NASA astronaut Jessica Meir. Expedition 75 will officially begin the moment Soyuz MS‑28 undocks. NASA will provide live coverage of the change of command, undocking, and landing on its streaming channels and website.

What the Routine Rotation Says About Low Earth Orbit Operations

A Programmatic Milestone in a Mature Partnership

The return of a mixed NASA‑Roscosmos crew on a Russian Soyuz vehicle is a routine yet vital operation that reflects the deep inter‑agency cooperation sustaining the ISS. While geopolitical tensions have occasionally raised questions about space collaboration, the orbital logistics chain continues to function predictably. This mission demonstrates that the technical and operational frameworks for crew rotation remain robust, ensuring the uninterrupted human presence in low Earth orbit that has lasted for more than 25 years.

Implications for Artemis and Commercial LEO

NASA frames such missions as building blocks for longer‑duration voyages to the Moon under Artemis and, eventually, to Mars. The data gathered on crew health, life support systems, and the behaviour of equipment over extended stays directly feeds the design of deep‑space habitats. At the same time, reliable government‑operated crew rotations keep the station available for the expanding portfolio of commercial payloads and private astronaut missions that NASA is encouraging in low Earth orbit, a precursor to the agency’s goal of handing over LEO operations to commercial platforms later this decade.