Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

How to watch record-setting NASA astronaut return to Earth this week

By

Record-breaking NASA astronaut Frank Rubio will return to Earth this Wednesday. Rubio recently set a new record for the longest single stay in space by a NASA astronaut, surpassing one year spent on the International Space Station (ISS).

NASA Live: Official Stream of NASA TV

Rubio and two other ISS crewmembers will return to Earth this week, and their journey will be live-streamed by NASA if you want to watch along at home.

Recommended Videos

What to expect from the return journey

NASA astronaut and Expedition 69 Flight Engineer Frank Rubio poses for a portrait while working inside the International Space Station's Destiny laboratory module.
NASA astronaut and Expedition 69 flight engineer Frank Rubio works inside the International Space Station’s Destiny laboratory module. NASA

Rubio will be returning to Earth along with two Roscosmos cosmonauts, Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, who have also been staying on the station for a total of 371 days in space. They will travel in a Russian Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft, which will undock from the station’s Prichal module before traveling back through the early morning and landing near to the town of Jezkazgan in Kazakhstan.

Related

From their landing site, the trio will fly to Karaganda, Kazakhstan, and Rubio will then head on the Houston on a NASA plane.

The trio have been in space for so long in part due to an issue with their original spacecraft, the Soyuz MS-22. The spacecraft arrived at the space station carrying the three crewmembers as planned in September 2022 and was docked to the station, with the aim to return the trio in March this year. But in December 2022, the spacecraft was seen leaking coolant fluid and it was deemed too dangerous for humans to travel in.

Another Soyuz — the MS-23 — was sent as a replacement in February, and the MS-22 returned to Earth without any passengers. Now the three will return on the replacement spacecraft, which has not had any issues.

How to watch the return journey

NASA TV will livestream the return journey of the Soyuz MS-23, beginning at 12:01 a.m. ET on Wednesday, September 27, with coverage of the crew’s farewells and hatch closing. Coverage of the undocking begins at 3 a.m. ET (midnight PT), with undocking scheduled for 3:55 a.m. ET (12:55 a.m. PT). Coverage of the deorbit burn and landing begins at 6 a.m. ET (3 a.m. PT),  with the former scheduled for 6:24 a.m. ET (3:24 a.m. PT) and  the latter for 7:17 a.m. ET (4:17 a.m. PT).

You can watch the live stream either by heading to NASA’s live YouTube stream or by using the video embedded near the top of this page.

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
See the polar moon sites where NASA plans to land its astronauts
An artist’s concept of an Artemis astronaut deploying an instrument on the lunar surface.

NASA has updated its list of potential landing sites for the next human visit to the moon, which is planned for 2026. The Artemis III mission will see the first crewed lunar landing since the Apollo era, and the plan is for astronauts to explore the moon's South Pole region where there is thought to be water ice on the lunar surface.

NASA shared a list of 13 candidate landing locations for Artemis III in 2022, but has now updated its list to nine candidates. Some of these were on the list previously, while others have been added such as the Mons Mouton mountain and plateau, which is particularly interesting to scientists because the height of the mountain means that there are permanently shadowed regions nearby. These places, where sunlight never touches, are particularly good candidates when it comes to looking for water ice.

Read more
A SpaceX Crew Dragon is doing a shuffle at the ISS — here’s how to watch
The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft carrying NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov approaches the International Space Station as it orbits 259 miles above Oregon.

This week will see a special maneuver at the International Space Station (ISS) as a SpaceX Crew Dragon takes one of the tiniest flights ever, hopping just a few meters over from one port of the station to another. And NASA will live stream the event, so you'll be able to watch the spacecraft take this short flight as it happens.

The changeover is necessary to make space for another SpaceX craft that will arrive on Monday, October 4. But this new arrival won't carry any crew as it is a cargo craft, part of the 31st commercial resupply services mission by SpaceX. This new arrival will dock at the forward-facing port on the Space Station's Harmony module, as it is easiest for craft to dock there than on the space-facing side. But the Crew Dragon is currently occupying this port, so it needs to undock, move to the other space-facing port, and redock there.

Read more
A SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft has set a new record
SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft.

SpaceX’s Crew-8 members are finally on their way home after spending nearly eight months at the International Space Station (ISS).

The crew members were supposed to depart the ISS several weeks ago, but poor weather conditions at the splashdown site off the coast of Florida prompted mission planners to delay the homecoming. Prior to that, delays to departure were caused by measures to deal with Boeing’s troubled Starliner spacecraft, which was docked at the station over the summer.

Read more