Expedition 30 Crew Returns to Earth Safely

By Nancy Atkinson - April 27, 2012 at 3:00 PM UTC | Space Exploration

Welcome back home to the Expedition 30 crew of the International Space Station! The Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft carrying Commander Dan Burbank and Flight Engineers Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin landed in Kazakhstan on Friday, April 27 at 11:45 UTC (7:45 a.m. EDT). They undocked earlier from the International Space Station at 8:18 UTC (4:18 a.m. EDT). Take a look at the video of how painstaking it is to extract the crew from the Soyuz capsule!

Expedition 31 began when Burbank, Shkaplerov and Ivanishin undocked from the station. On board the ISS now is Commander Oleg Kononenko and Flight Engineers Don Pettit and Andre Kuipers. They will continue their stay until July 1, and they will be joined in in mid-May by Flight Engineers Gennady Padalka, Joe Acaba and Sergei Revin. Right now, their launch is scheduled for May 15 and their stay in space would last until September 17.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com