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Expedition 48 Crew Preparing to Return Home

View of sunrise over Earth's horizon taken from low Earth orbit
Expedition 48 Commander Jeff Williams of NASA returns to Earth Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2016, after a five-and-a-half-month mission aboard the International Space Station. Williams captured this photograph and wrote, "I will certainly miss this view! Vast gratitude toward my crewmates, ground teams, supporting friends, and family."

Expedition 48 Commander Jeff Williams of NASA returns to Earth Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2016, after a five-and-a-half-month mission aboard the International Space Station. Williams captured this photograph from the orbiting laboratory and wrote, “I will certainly miss this view! Vast gratitude toward my crewmates, ground teams, supporting friends, and family.”

Williams and Flight Engineers Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin of Roscosmos will undock their Soyuz TMA-20M spacecraft at 5:51 p.m. EDT, officially ending the Expedition 48 mission. After a few hours they will parachute to a landing in Kazakhstan at 9:14 p.m. (7:14 a.m. Kazakhstan time Sept. 7.)

Image Credit: NASA