International Space Station Expedition 50 Commander Shane Kimbrough, KE5HOD, and two cosmonauts, are preparing to return to Earth on April 10. NASA TV will cover their departure and return. Coming home with Kimbrough will be Flight Engineers Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency.

The trio will undock the Soyuz MS-02 spacecraft from the space station at 0800 UTC on April 10 and land in Kazakhstan about 30 hours later. Their return wraps up 173 days in space for the crew members since their launch to the ISS last October.

A change-of-command ceremony will take place onboard the ISS on April, in which Kimbrough will hand over station command to veteran astronaut Peggy Whitson, ex-KC5ZTD.

NASA says the Expedition 50 crew members continued work on hundreds of experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science, and Earth science during their ISS duty tours.

Whitson, Oleg Novitskiy, and Thomas Pesquet, KG5FYG, will operate the station until the arrival of two new crew members. Jack Fischer, KG5FYH, and Fyodor Yurchikhin, RN3FI, are scheduled to launch on April 20 from Baikonur, Kazakhstan.