Three ISS crewmembers to return to Earth on Oct 4 - Energia
MOSCOW. Sept 19 (Interfax-AVN) - The board of chief designers of the Russian segment of the International Space Station (ISS) has approved a proposal from the Energia Corporation to return Russian Cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev and NASA Astronauts Richard Arnold and Andrew Feustel to the Earth from the ISS on October 4, Energia's press service said on Wednesday.
"At the end of the meeting, the board of general designers approved the Energia Rocket and Space Corporation's proposals on returning the Expedition 55/56 crew, including Oleg Artemyev, Richard Arnold, and Andrew Feustel, aboard the Soyuz MS-08 manned spacecraft on October 4, 2018," it said.
The board also approved preparations for launching the Soyuz MS-10S manned spacecraft on October 11 to deliver Expedition 57/58 crewmembers Alexei Ovchinin (Roscosmos) and Nick Hague (NASA) to the ISS.
Vladimir Solovyov, the first deputy general designer for flight operations and tests of spacecraft and rocket systems at Energia, said at the board meeting that the Expedition 57 crew will conduct 50 experiments under Russia's applied scientific research program, 44 of them with the rest of the crew's involvement.