Space station crew heads for home

Outgoing space station commander Steve Swanson, front right, Soyuz TMA-12M commander Alexander Skvortsov, right center, and Oleg Artemyev, back right, are scheduled to return to Earth Wednesday, leaving the lab in the hands of Expedition 41 commander Maxim Suraev, front left, Reid Wiseman, left center, and Alexander Gerst, back left. NASA

Three space station crewmen -- two Russian cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut -- packed up and prepared for a fiery return to Earth Wednesday evening to wrap up a 169-day stay in space.

Soyuz TMA-12M commander Alexander Skvortsov, flight engineer Oleg Artemyev and outgoing Expedition 40 commander Steven Swanson were scheduled to undock from the International Space Station's upper Poisk module at 7:01 p.m. EDT (GMT-4) Wednesday.

After moving a safe distance away, Skvortsov and Artemyev plan to oversee an automated four-minute 40-second firing of the Soyuz spacecraft's braking rockets starting at 9:31 p.m., setting up a a steep plunge back into the atmosphere and a landing in Kazakhstan near the town of Dzhezkazgan at 10:24 p.m. (8:24 a.m. Thursday local time).

"It takes only three hours and 20 minutes from the time I undock from the International Space Station until the time I'm on the ground in Kazakhstan," Swanson told a reporter Monday. "I've heard it's quite an eventful trip. I haven't experienced it yet myself, but from what I've been told it's definitely the big ride at Disney World."

As usual, Russian recovery crews, flight surgeons and a contingent of NASA support personnel were deployed near the landing zone to help the returning station fliers out of the cramped Soyuz capsule after five-and-a-half months in the weightlessness of low-Earth orbit.

After a quick round of medical checks and satellite phone calls to friends and family, Skvortsov, Artemyev and Swanson will be flown by helicopter to Karaganda for an official Kazakh welcome home ceremony.

After that, the crew will split up, with Skvortsov and Artemyev heading on to the cosmonaut training center at Star City near Moscow while Swanson boards a NASA jet for the long flight back to Houston and the Johnson Space Center.

Outgoing space station commander Steve Swanson, left, Soyuz TMA-12M commander Alexander Skvortsov, center, and Oleg Artemyev plan to undock from the lab complex Wednesday evening and land in Kazakhstan to close out a 169-day stay in orbit.

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Space station crew heads for home