NASA Astronaut Tracy Dyson Returns From ISS On Russian Soyuz After 184 Days In Orbit

NASA astronaut Tracy C. Dyson has returned to Earth onboard the Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft following her 184-day mission on the International Space Station (ISS). The Soyuz vehicle touched down safely on the steppe of Kazakhstan carrying Dyson and two Russian counterparts.

NASA astronaut Dyson return on Soyuz

Together with Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy and Belarusian Marina Vasilevskaya, Dyson launched into space onboard the Soyuz MS-25 on March 23rd, arriving at the ISS on March 25th. While Novitskiy and Vasilevskaya would stay on the ISS for just 12 days before returning on April 6th, Dyson was in it for the long-haul with a six-month stay ahead.

nasa dyson astronaut

Photo: NASA

Accompanying her on the return flight were Roscosmos cosmonauts Nikolai Chub and Oleg Kononenko, who spent more than double Dyson’s time onboard the ISS at 374 days (a new record). Chub and Kononenko arrived at the ISS more than a year ago onboard the Soyuz MS-24.

After undocking from the ISS, the Soyuz MS-25 completed a parachute-assisted landing near the town of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan. The three astronauts were then transported by helicopter to the recovery staging city of Karaganda, Kazakhstan – from here, Dyson will board a NASA plane to Houston, while Chub and Kononenko will fly to Star City in Russia.

cosmonaut soyuz

Photo: NASA

It was a record-breaking trip for both Russians, who completed the longest single stays onboard the ISS in history at 374 days, beating the previous record by just three days. Kononenko also had something to celebrate by taking his total time in space to 1,111 days, a fair distance ahead of the 878 days completed by cosmonaut Gennady Padalka – in the process, Kononenko became the most experienced astronaut in history.

soyuz landing

Photo: NASA

Kononenko was the ISS station commander and has now handed the position over to NASA astronaut Suni Williams, who arrived on the ISS with Butch Wilmore in June during Starliner’s first crewed test. Williams and Wilmore were supposed to be onboard the ISS for just eight days, but complications with the Starliner vehicle will take them to almost nine months before their return onboard a Crew Dragon in February 2025.

During a handover ceremony, Williams said,

“Expedition 71 has taught all of us a lot about flexibility. You adopted Butch and I, even though that was not quite the plan. But here we are as part of the family. We appreciate it.”

Dyson’s mission

Dyson was on the ISS as an Expedition 70 and 71 flight engineer and completed 2,944 orbits of the Earth during her stay on the space station, amounting to a distance of 78 million miles covered. She also completed a brief 30-minute spacewalk, taking her career time to 23 hours and 20 minutes across four spacewalks.

During her time onboard the ISS, Dyson performed a wide range of duties and experiments to support scientific research and the station’s upkeep. The mission was Dyson’s third spaceflight, having flown as a mission specialist on the space shuttle Endeavour in 2007 and as a flight engineer on Soyuz Expedition 23 in 2010.

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