Soyuz MS-25

Undocking and Return

On 23 September 2024, at the close of Expedition 71, Tracy Caldwell-Dyson came back to Earth aboard Soyuz MS-25 alongside Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub. The trio had originally launched with NASA’s Loral O’Hara on Soyuz MS-24 on 15 September 2023. O’Hara later returned on that same spacecraft with cosmonauts Novitsky and Vasileuskaya. Kononenko and Chub, however, stayed on the space station for a full year.

Because their mission spanned 374 days, Kononenko’s cumulative time in orbit reached 1,111 days upon landing. He surpassed Gennady Padalka’s previous record of 878 days on 4 February 2024 at 07:30:08 UTC. Subsequently, he became the first human to log 900, 1,000, and 1,100 days in space, hitting those milestones on 25 February, 4 June, and 12 September 2024 respectively.

Did You Know?

• MS-25 saw the launch of two people from Belarus, as the mission commander Oleg Novitsky was born in Chervyen, when it was part of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.
• The launch was originally scheduled for 21 March 2024, but due to a voltage drop in one of the power generators, the launch was aborted.