Expedition 18 Lands Today

NASA has announced that the Expedition 18 crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS) has successfully undocked from the orbital lab at 11:52 pm EDT (0352 GMT) on Tuesday, and that it is currently on route to the steppes of Kazakhstan, where it's due to land at 3:16 am EDT (0716 GMT). The flight began at 2:24 am EDT (0624 GMT), and the Soyuz TMA-13 capsule returning to Earth carries former ISS commander Michael Fincke – who has handed over the command to Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka – as well as flight engineer Yury Lonchakov. Both spent a 6-month stay in orbit, as the backbone of Expedition 18.

The returning Soyuz capsule will also bring back repeat space tourist Charles Simonyi, who spent more than a week aboard the international facility. The software billionaire paid 35 million dollars for the trip, after forking out some $25 million for his first one, in 2007. Originally supposed to return to Earth on April 7th, the Expedition 18 crew together with Simonyi were forced to spend an extra day on the ISS on account of the fact that their designated landing site had been flooded.

The delay was necessary until the mission controllers found a new, suitable landing location for the craft, and got the recovery teams on high alert. The landing is expected to go without a hitch, officials from NASA and the RocCosmos Russian space agency say. “Here's to a really good flight, and I'm hoping for a soft landing,” Simony shares in an audio message, posted on the website on which he is chronicling his trip to the space station. His stay on the ISS was not one of leisure, as he helped both the Expedition 18 and 19 crews perform their respective tasks.

“It makes it even a little bit tougher because we have such a great crew, all six of us here at one time. It's going to be really tough to shut the hatch and leave,” NASA astronaut Michael Fincke told before the Soyuz separated from the ISS. “It's bittersweet. I can't wait to see my beautiful wife and kids again, but I love the space station,” he is quoted as saying by Space.