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Expedition 74 Continues After Crew-11 Returns to Earth

Expedition 74 crew members (from left) NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Mikaev pose for a portrait at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
Expedition 74 crew members (from left) NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Mikaev pose for a portrait at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
NASA/James Blair

Three Expedition 74 crew members continue to reside aboard the International Space Station now following the return to Earth of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 mission on Thursday. The orbiting trio will conduct research and maintenance while awaiting the arrival of four new crewmates planned in February.

NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov are back on Earth completing 167 days in space. The Crew-11 quartet returned in a SpaceX Dragon back to Earth for a parachute-assisted splashdown off the coast of California just ten-and-a-half-hours after undocking from the station’s Harmony module.

Meanwhile, NASA Flight Engineer Chris Williams along with station Commander Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Flight Engineer Sergei Mikaev are on the orbital outpost and will stay in space until summer. The trio arrived on Thanksgiving Day last year aboard the Soyuz MS-28 spacecraft beginning an eight-month space research mission.

Williams spent Friday inside the Quest airlock deconfiguring a pair of spacesuits set up for last week’s spacewalk before it was postponed. He cleaned and flushed the suits’ internal water-cooling loops that regulate a spacewalker’s body temperature. Next, he powered down and inspected the suits, then uninstalled suit hardware, components, and batteries.

Mikaev installed Earth observation hardware and programmed it to photograph African landmarks from Namibia’s Namib Desert to Kenya’s Nabiyotum Crater on the southern tip of Lake Turkana. Kud-Sverchkov serviced the Elektron oxygen generator inside the Zvezda service module then documented the location of hardware stowed throughout the station’s Roscosmos segment.

Back on Earth, NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 members are looking ahead to next month when they are targeted to launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket aboard a Dragon crew spacecraft and join Expedition 74. Crew-12 will be commanded by Jessica Meir and piloted by Jack Hathaway, both NASA astronauts, with Sophie Adenot of ESA (European Space Agency) and Andrey Fedyaev of Roscosmos serving as mission specialists. NASA, SpaceX, and international partners are working to advance the launch of Crew-12, which is currently slated for Sunday, Feb. 15, following the early departure of Crew-11.

Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station on X, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.

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