A little while ago, cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveev, and Sergey Korsakov returned to Earth on the Soyuz MS-21 spacecraft, which landed in Kazakhstan. They spent just over 6 months on the International Space Station, where they arrived on March 18, 2022, as part of Expedition 66.

During the time spent on the International Space Station with the final part of Expedition 67, the three crew members carried out various routine maintenance activities and many scientific experiments. On May 20, Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft reached the Station on its OFT-2 mission. The Starliner left the Station on May 25. On June 28, the Cygnus “Piers Sellers” cargo spacecraft left the Station. On July 16, the Dragon cargo spacecraft reached the Station on its CRS-25 mission, which ended on August 20 with its return to Earth.

During the period of the final part of Expedition 67, three spacewalks were conducted. On 21 July, Oleg Artemyev and his Expedition 67/68 colleague Samantha Cristoforetti took just over 7 hours to complete a series of installation work on various instruments, including the European Robotic Arm, maintenance tasks and deployed 10 into orbit. nanosatellites. On August 17, Oleg Artemyev and Denis Matveev conducted some work but had to stop the spacewalk after 4 hours following an anomaly detected in the battery of Artemyev’s spacesuit. On September 2, the two cosmonauts took nearly 8 hours to complete the various scheduled installation and maintenance tasks.

On Wednesday, September 28, Oleg Artemyev officially handed over the command of the International Space Station to Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, marking the start of Expedition 68. In the Station’s original crew rotation schedule, Samantha Cristoforetti was supposed to take command of the Station. Some schedule changes seemed to have made this unlikely but left a possibility open. With close launches and returns to Earth, the schedule can be changed until the last moment and such a case has allowed Cristoforetti to become Station commander.

In this case, the Crew-5 mission is experiencing delays in launching from the Kennedy Space Center because Hurricane Ian is lashing Florida. Right now, the scheduled launch date is October 5 but it has already been postponed a number of times, so the 4 new International Space Station crew members may have to wait a little longer.