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[b]Soyuz TMA-12M departs space station[/b] Three Expedition 39/40 crew members are on their way home, having undocked at 6:01 p.m. CDT (2301 GMT) on Wednesday (Sept. 10) from the International Space Station's Poisk mini-research module. They will land in less than three and a half hours when their Soyuz TMA-12M spacecraft touches down in Kazakhstan. Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev of Roscosmos and Steve Swanson of NASA closed the hatches to the Soyuz at 2:35 p.m. CDT. On Tuesday, Swanson turned over control of the space station to Max Suraev during a traditional change of command ceremony. The homebound trio will orbit Earth twice before the Soyuz fires its deorbit engines at 8:30 p.m. CDT sending the spacecraft on its way home. About 28 minutes later, the Soyuz spacecraft will separate into three sections with the descent module, sandwiched in between the orbital module and instrumentation/propulsion module, carrying the crew home. The descent module will enter the atmosphere about 3 minutes later. The other two modules will burn up in the atmosphere. Two pilot parachutes will deploy first extracting the drogue chute to begin slowing the Soyuz' descent. The main chute will then deploy in stages ultimately covering an area of 1,000 meters. Finally, less than a meter above the ground, rockets will fire to soften the landing as the Soyuz touches down in the steppe of Kazakhstan at 9:23 p.m. CDT (0223 GMT Sept. 11).
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