06/25/2019

Soyuz MS-11 Spacecraft Safely Returns back to Earth Expedition 59 Space Crew

Three Optolink's TRS-500 fiber-optic gyroscopes, installed into control system of Descent Module of the latest Soyuz modification, Soyuz MS-11 spacecraft, successfully executed their mission during landing. The Russian Soyuz MS-11 safely returned with Expedition 59 crew members, Soyuz Commander Oleg Kononenko of Roscosmos, NASA astronaut Anne McClain, and Flight Engineer David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency. The landing module safely landed on-target about 148 kilometers south-east from the town of Dzhezkazgan in the Kazakhstan on 25 June 2019, at 02:47 UTC (08:47 local time). The crew completed a 204-day mission spanning 3,264 orbits of the Earth and a journey of 86.4 million miles. Over the past six months, the Expedition 59 crew members helped conduct hundreds of science experiments and oversaw the arrival and departure of several resupply ships. They were also in place to receive the first U.S. commercial crew spacecraft, SpaceX's Crew Dragon. Expedition 59 was Kononenko's fourth stay on the International Space Station. He has now logged more than 737 days off Earth, ranking him sixth in the world for the most time accumulated in space.