Expedition 35 Takes Over

Expedition 34 Commander Kevin Ford and Flight Engineers Evgeny Tarelkin and Oleg Novitskiy landed their Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft in the steppe of Kazakhstan, northeast of the remote town of Arkalyk Friday at an estimated time of 11:08 p.m. EST.

Despite fog, low visibility and below freezing temperatures Russian recovery teams were on hand to help the crew exit the Soyuz vehicle and adjust to gravity after 144 days in space.

The three Expedition 34 crew members said goodbye to three of their International Space Station crewmates Friday afternoon March 15, 2013. Commander Kevin Ford and Flight Engineers Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin entered their Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft and undocked at 7:43 p.m. EST after five months in space. Staying behind was new Expedition 35 Commander Chris Hadfield with Flight Engineers Tom Marshburn and Roman Romanenko. They await a new trio of station residents scheduled for lift off from Kazakhstan at the end of March.

The trio originally launched aboard the Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in October and spent 142 days living and working aboard the International Space Station.

Novitskiy was at the controls of the spacecraft as it undocked from the Poisk Mini-Research Module 2.

The undocking marks the end of Expedition 34 and the start of Expedition 35 under the command of Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield, who is scheduled to remain on the station with Flight Engineers Tom Marshburn and Roman Romanenko until May. Ford ceremonially handed command of the station over to Hadfield on Wednesday. Hadfield, Marshburn and Romanenko arrived at the station aboard the Soyuz TMA-07M spacecraft in December 2012.

Hadfield, Marshburn and Romanenko will remain aboard the orbiting complex as a three-person crew until the March 28 launch and docking of Expedition 35 Flight Engineers Chris Cassidy, Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin.

FMI: www.nasa.gov