Skip to main content

Watch a Russian film crew depart from the ISS tonight

Having spent 11 days on the International Space Station (ISS), a Russian film crew will be heading back to Earth this evening, Saturday, October 16. They’ll be boarding a Russian Soyuz MS-18, and the undocking and landing will be livestreamed on NASA TV. If you’d like to watch along at home, we’ve got all the details below.

NASA Live: Official Stream of NASA TV

What to expect from the undocking and landing

The three crew members who will be returning to Earth tonight are the film crew, Actress Yulia Peresild and Producer Klim Shipenko, plus cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy who will be acting as Soyuz commander. Novitskiy has been on the station since April this year, and his colleague Anton Shkaplerov recently arrived to take his place on the ISS crew.

10 ISS inhabitants are gathered together in the Unity module for a meal and a portrait.
The 10 station inhabitants are gathered together in the Unity module for a meal and a portrait. In the front row (from left) are, Mark Vande Hei, Klim Shipenko, Pyotr Dubrov, and Megan McArthur. In the back row (from left) are, Akihiko Hoshide, Anton Shkaplerov, Thomas Pesquet, Yulia Peresild, Oleg Novitskiy, and Shane Kimbrough. NASA

The three will enter into the Soyuz on Saturday afternoon, undock from the station’s Nauka module, and return to Earth, landing on late Saturday night. The Soyuz will deploy its parachutes over Kazakhstan and slow the craft to make a landing on the Kazakh steppe at 12:36 a.m. ET on Sunday (9:36 p.m. PT on Saturday).

How to watch the undocking and landing

NASA will be sharing coverage of the Soyuz’s journey home on its NASA TV channel, which you can watch either by heading to NASA’s website or by using the video player embedded at the top of this page.

Coverage begins at 4:15 p.m. ET (1:15 p.m. PT) on Saturday, October 16, with coverage of the crew farewells. At 7:30 p.m. ET (4:30 p.m. PT), coverage will switch to NASA’s events for International Observe the Moon Night. Then, later that night at 9 p.m. ET (6 p.m. PT), coverage will pick back up with the undocking, which is scheduled for 9:14 p.m. ET (6:14 p.m. PT).

The coverage of the deorbit burn and landing will follow at 11:15 p.m. ET (8:15 p.m. PT), with the deorbit burn scheduled for 11:41 p.m. ET (8:41 p.m. PT) and landing scheduled for 12:36 a.m. ET on Sunday (9:36 p.m. PT on Saturday).

Editors' Recommendations

Georgina Torbet
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
How to watch SpaceX Crew-8 launch to the space station tonight
SpaceX's Crew-8 ahead of launch.

NASA Live: Official Stream of NASA TV

UPDATE: NASA and SpaceX had been targeting early Saturday for the Crew 8 launch, but a forecast of strong winds in the ascent corridor prompted the mission team to switch to a new targeted launch time of 10:53 p.m. ET (7:53 p.m. PT) on Sunday, March 3. The article below has been updated to reflect this change. 

Read more
NASA astronauts need good weather for Crew-8 launch. Here’s how it’s looking
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket during a static fire test.

UPDATE: SpaceX and NASA are now targeting 11:16 p.m. ET on Saturday, March 2 for the launch of Crew-8.

SpaceX is preparing to launch three NASA astronauts and one Roscosmos cosmonaut to the International Space Station (ISS).

Read more
Thunderstorm from space captured in dramatic video from ISS
A storm seen from the International Space Station in 2024.

Private astronaut Marcus Wandt has shared a dramatic video captured from the International Space Station (ISS) showing a thunderstorm from above.

The footage (below) shows numerous flashes among clouds in what looks to have been a ferocious storm.

Read more