A few hours ago, cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, director Klim Shipenko, and actress Yulia Peresild returned to Earth on the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft, which landed in Kazakhstan. Novitskiy spent just over 6 months on the International Space Station, where he arrived on April 9, 2021, as part of Expedition 64. Shipenko and Peresild arrived on October 5, 2021, to shoot a film on the Station in an agreement with the space agency Roscosmos that changed the normal rotation of the Station crew.

Normally, there’s a change in command of the International Space Station on the occasion of crew rotation. Some crew members return to Earth after completing their mission, and that includes the former Station commander. In this case, only Oleg Novitskiy returned to Earth, in this case, accompanied by director Klim Shipenko and actress Yulia Peresild, and the Russian cosmonaut wasn’t the commander. Despite this, the departure of the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft marked the start of Expedition 66. Already on October 4, Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide officially handed over the command of the International Space Station to French astronaut Thomas Pesquet.

Before the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft’s departure, there was an incident during the test of its thrusters. The test is a routine before the return of a spacecraft to Earth to verify that the onboard systems are working and allow the maneuvers needed to bring the crew back to Earth. In this case, there was an unexpected firing of the thrusters that changed the International Space Station’s attitude.

At the time of the incident, the crew of the International Space Station was awake and there were no dangers. Attitude control was regained within about 30 minutes. There were no consequences and it was possible to proceed according to schedule with the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft’s departure. The Russian space agency Roscosmos is investigating the causes of the problem. For the Russians, this is the second incident of that type within a few months after the MLM/Nauka module’s thrusters fired unexpectedly shortly after its integration with the Station.

Now, the International Space Station has a crew of 7 people and the SpaceX Crew-3 mission is scheduled to launch with 4 more astronauts at the end of the month. American astronaut Mark Vande Hei and Russian cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov, who arrived on the Station together with Oleg Novitskiy, extended their mission to one year.