Astronauts Set To Return to Earth in Spacecraft They Just Cut a Hole In

Tonight at 8:40 p.m. EST, Expedition 57 Commander Alexander Gerst and Flight Engineers Serena Auñón-Chancellor and Sergey Prokopyev will end their 197-day mission in space and return home inside the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft. The astronauts will undock the spacecraft from the International Space Station, travel back toward Earth, and ultimately parachute down to Kazakhstan three-and-a-half hours later. Prokopyev will command the Soyuz flight which will be live-streamed on NASA TV. But, just a few days ago, this same spacecraft had a large hole cut into it by Prokopyev and Oleg Kononenko during a spacewalk. The cosmonauts cut out pieces of the external hull of the craft’s orbital module to bring back to Earth for analysis. These pieces will be studied as part of an ongoing investigation to find the cause or culprit behind the hole that appeared in the spacecraft this past summer. The hole was discovered after astronauts noticed ...