NASA TV To Broadcast Astronauts’ Return From International Space Station

Three crew members of the International Space Station (ISS) will embark on their return journey to Earth on Saturday June 18. The trio of astronauts was a part of Expedition 47 and includes Commander Tim Kopra of NASA, Soyuz Commander Yuri Malenchenko of the Russian space agency Roscosmos and Flight Engineer Tim Peake of the European Space Agency (ESA). NASA Television will reportedly broadcast the events of the astronauts' preparations for their departure from the ISS and return to Earth from 9:15 a.m. EDT on Friday, June 17.

Incidentally, the expedition 47 crew was scheduled to make their return journey to Earth in the beginning of June; however the space flight was delayed because the launch of their replacement crew's spacecraft was postponed. The space station usually has six astronauts on-board at a time. The new crew, who will be the members of Expedition 49 comprising of Kate Rubins, Takuya Onishi and Anatoli Ivanishin, are scheduled to make their journey to the ISS on July 6. In the meanwhile, the three members of Expedition 48 that include Jeff Williams, Oleg Skripochka and Aleksey Ovchinin will remain aboard and manage the flying space laboratory.

The return of the three expedition 47 astronauts will see a completion of 186 days in space, since their arrival on the space laboratory in December 2015. The team participated and contributed to numerous tests and experiments in the fields of Earth Science, physical science, biotechnology and biology aboard the orbiting lab.

The expedition 47 members will embark on their return flight on-board the Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft, which is docked at the space station, at 1:52 a.m. on Saturday, June 18. The spacecraft is scheduled to land in Kazakhstan at 5:15 a.m., which would be 3:12 p.m. local time. You can view the coverage of the event by NASA TV here.