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[b]Soyuz TMA-18 undocks from the space station[/b] Soyuz TMA-18, with Alexander Skvortsov, Tracy Caldwell Dyson, and Mikhail Kornienko onboard, undocked from the Poisk mini-research module on the International Space Station at 9:02 p.m. CDT Friday while flying 222 miles above the Russian-Mongolian border. The crew members aboard the station bid farewell to one another and closed the hatches between the two spacecraft at 5:35 p.m. CDT. Three minutes after undocking, two thrusters fired on the Soyuz for a 15-second separation burn, enabling the spacecraft to move away from the space station to a distance of 12 kilometers over the course of two orbits. A deorbit burn, scheduled for 11:31 p.m., will put the Soyuz on track for a 12:21 a.m. CDT landing on the steppes of Kazakhstan, wrapping up 176 days in space -- 174 onboard the station -- for Skvortsov, Caldwell Dyson and Kornienko. The successful undocking came one day later than originally planned. A first attempt on Thursday was delayed after hooks failed to open and mission controllers in Moscow had not received the expected "hatch locked" signal from the Poisk module. Though leak checks between the station and the Soyuz were good, the Poisk hooks failed to open when commanded. After waiting two orbits past the original undocking time, the departing crew members exited the Soyuz vehicle and spent the night in the station. Flight engineer Fyodor Yurchikhin installed jumper cables to bypass a failed hatch sensor, which allowed Mission Control in Moscow to successfully command the Poisk hooks to open Friday morning. Soyuz TMA-18's departure marked the end of Expedition 24 and the start of Expedition 25 under the command of Doug Wheelock, who will remain on the station with Shannon Walker and Yurchikhin until late November. Three additional Expedition 25 crew members, Scott Kelly, Alexander Kaleri and Oleg Skripochka, are set to launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard the Soyuz TMA-01M spacecraft Oct. 7 (Oct. 8, local time) and dock to the station two days later.
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