2026年7月26日 / 美国东部时间早上7:35 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
两名俄罗斯宇航员和一名NASA宇航员于周日早些时候结束了在国际空间站长达241天的驻留，伴随烈焰般的重返大气层过程，精准降落在哈萨克斯坦广阔的草原上。
搭乘联盟MS-28/74S载人飞船的指令长谢尔盖·库德-斯韦尔奇科夫、飞行工程师谢尔盖·米卡耶夫以及NASA宇航员克里斯·威廉姆斯于美国东部时间凌晨3点03分与空间站的俄罗斯“黎明”号舱段分离，并缓缓驶离空间站组合体。
两名半小时后，在安全脱离并对准再入轨道后，联盟号飞船的制动火箭点火4分42秒，将航天器从轨道上脱离，以西南至东北的轨迹飞向哈萨克斯坦。
在大气层摩擦产生的烈焰中迅速减速后，联盟号乘员舱的主降落伞展开并充气，历经10分钟的下降过程，于美国东部时间早上6点27分（当地时间下午3点27分）在杰兹卡兹甘镇附近依靠火箭辅助装置完成震动较小的着陆。
本次任务时长：自去年11月27日发射以来，共计241天，完成3856次轨道飞行，总航程达1.02亿英里。
驻守在附近的俄罗斯回收人员迅速奔向乘员舱，协助三名返航宇航员从狭窄的舱内走出，帮助他们适应在失重环境中度过八个月后重新回到重力环境。
与几乎所有联盟号飞船着陆场景一样，库德-斯韦尔奇科夫、米卡耶夫和威廉姆斯被抬到附近的躺椅上接受初步医疗检查，享用一点新鲜水果，并通过卫星电话与家人朋友通话。
“每过一刻，我的感觉就越来越好，”库德-斯韦尔奇科夫在躺椅上说道。“我要感谢所有支持这次着陆任务的人。一切都顺利且完美，简直太棒了。”
三名机组人员都收到了俄罗斯回收人员赠送的个性化俄罗斯套娃作为欢迎回家的礼物。
“里面装了伏特加，”有人通过翻译说道。“嗯，其实，这就是我当初飞往太空的原因之一，”其中一名机组人员开玩笑道。
脱下厚重的舱外航天服后，三人将搭乘直升机前往约285英里外的卡拉干达镇。从那里，威廉姆斯将乘坐NASA专机长途返回位于休斯顿的约翰逊航天中心，而他的两名同事则将返回莫斯科附近的星城。
本次着陆后，威廉姆斯和飞行工程师米卡耶夫完成了他们的首次太空飞行，而曾在2020年至2021年间在空间站驻留185天的资深老手库德-斯韦尔奇科夫则结束了他的第二次太空任务。
在本次飞行期间，威廉姆斯参与了两次太空行走：一次用于更换空间站机械臂的关节，另一次用于为安装新的展开式太阳能帆板做准备。库德-斯韦尔奇科夫和米卡耶夫也在空间站俄罗斯舱段外部进行了一次维护太空行走。
威廉姆斯表示，他无法奢求到更好的机组伙伴了。
“这真的是一支很棒的机组，”他在发射前接受NASA采访时说道。“谢尔盖和谢尔盖两个人都非常棒，为人友善，对事物充满兴趣和强烈的求知欲，这真的很有趣。我们进行了很多非常非常棒的交流，就是单纯地聊天，聊各种话题。”
搭乘联盟MS-28/74S飞船的指令长谢尔盖·库德-斯韦尔奇科夫、宇航员谢尔盖·米卡耶夫以及NASA宇航员克里斯·威廉姆斯缓缓驶离国际空间站，开启了为期3小时20分钟的返回地球之旅，圆满结束了为期241天的任务。NASA
留在空间站上的人员包括NASA第12乘组指令长杰西卡·梅尔、杰克·哈撒韦、欧洲航天局宇航员索菲·阿代诺以及宇航员安德烈·费佳耶夫。梅尔于周六的简短仪式上从库德-斯韦尔奇科夫手中接过了空间站指挥权。
同时在站的还有联盟MS-29/75S指令长彼得·杜布罗夫、宇航员安娜·基基纳以及NASA宇航员阿尼尔·梅农，他们于7月14日从哈萨克斯坦拜科努尔航天发射场升空前往空间站，接替威廉姆斯和他的同事们。
于2月13日发射升空的第12乘组将由一支新的NASA赞助乘组于9月12日从佛罗里达州发射升空接替。
威廉姆斯曾是志愿消防员和急救医疗技术员，后来获得了麻省理工学院的天体物理学博士学位。在2021年被选入NASA宇航员队伍时，他是哈佛医学院获得执业资格的医学物理学家。
而这正是他毕生梦想的实现。
“从我记事起，也就是我还是个小孩子的时候，我就一直对探索，尤其是太空探索着迷，”他在空间站上接受采访时说道。
“我想这是很多孩子都会有的爱好，而我从来没有褪去这份热情。这一直是我好奇心的重要来源……我一生都从未放弃过这个梦想。”
在周六的换岗仪式后，国际空间站的全体机组人员拥抱在一起合影留念，此时联盟MS-28指令长谢尔盖·库德-斯韦尔奇科夫、宇航员谢尔盖·米卡耶夫和NASA的克里斯·威廉姆斯正为周日早些时候的返程做准备。NASA
在空间站上的另一次采访中，他表示这次经历远超他的预期。
“我想在空间站上这段时间，我最感激的事情之一就是透过窗户眺望地球，我意识到了我可能从未如此珍惜过地球，”他说道。
“我想任何来到这里的人，当你看到地球上万物发展的惊人模式时，都会或多或少变成一个 budding geologist（初出茅庐的地质学家）。”
同样地，如果他有机会登上月球，“我想我会非常兴奋做的一件事就是抽时间四处看看……我认为，身处月球上的人类眼睛和大脑，会成为非常独特的观察工具。
“所以我愿意利用所有空闲时间去观察，尽情沉浸其中。”
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/nasa-astronaut-joins-two-russians-in-trip-to-international-space-station/
NASA astronaut, 2 cosmonauts return to Earth after eight-month stay International Space Station
July 26, 2026 / 7:35 AM EDT / CBS News
Two Russian cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut closed out a 241-day stay aboard the International Space Station early Sunday with a fiery plunge back to Earth and an on-target touchdown on the broad steppe of Kazakhstan.
Strapped into the Soyuz MS-28/74S ferry ship, commander Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, flight engineer Sergey Mikaev and NASA’s Chris Williams undocked from the station’s Russian Rassvet module at 3:03 a.m. EDT and slowly backed away from the lab complex.
A Russian Soyuz capsule, carrying commander Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, cosmonaut Sergey Mikaev and NASA astronaut Chris Williams, lands on the steppe of Kazakhstan in a cloud of dust kicked up by the ship’s braking thrusters. Touchdown marked the end of a long-duration stay aboard the International Space Station. NASA/Roscosmos
Two-and-a-half hours later, now a safe distance away and properly lined up for re-entry, the Soyuz’s braking rockets fired for four minutes and 42 seconds, dropping the craft out of orbit on a southwest-to-northeast trajectory toward Kazakhstan.
After rapidly decelerating in a blaze of atmospheric friction, the Soyuz crew module’s main parachute unfurled and inflated for a 10-minute descent to a jarring rocket-assisted touchdown at 6:27 a.m. EDT (3:27 p.m. local time) near the town of Dzhezkazgan.
Mission duration: 241 days over 3,856 orbits covering 102 million miles since launch last Nov. 27.
Russian recovery crews stationed nearby quickly raced to the crew module to help the returning fliers out of the cramped capsule as they began re-adjusting to gravity after eight months in weightlessness.
As with virtually all Soyuz landings, Kud-Sverchkov, Mikaev and Williams were carried to nearby recliners for initial medical checks, a bit of fresh fruit and satellite phone calls home to family and friends.
“I am feeling better and better with each moment,” Kud-Sverchkov said from his recliner. “I would like to thank everyone who supported this landing. Everything was smooth and perfect. Everything was just excellent.”
Williams shows off a nested matryoshka doll he was given by Russian recovery crews shortly after landing. NASA/Roscosmos
All three crew members were given personalized Russian matryoshka dolls as welcome home gifts.
“There is vodka inside,” someone said through a translator. “Well, actually, this is why I flew to space in the first place,” one of the crew members joked.
After doffing their bulky pressure suits, the trio was to be flown by helicopter to the town of Karaganda some 285 miles away. From there, Williams faced a long flight back to the Johnson Space Center in Houston aboard a NASA jet while his crewmates headed home to Star City near Moscow.
With landing Sunday, Williams and flight engineer Mikaev completed their first space flight while Kud-Sverchkov, a seasoned veteran who logged 185 days aboard the space station in 2020-2021, wrapped up his second.
Over the course of the flight, Williams participated in two spacewalks: one to replace a joint in the lab’s robot arm and another to prepare for installing new roll-out solar blankets. Kud-Sverchkov and Mikaev also staged a maintenance spacewalk outside the Russian segment of the station.
Williams said he could not have asked for better crewmates.
“It’s a really great crew,” he said in a NASA interview before launch. “Sergey and Sergey are both just absolutely wonderful people, really kind, super interested, super intellectually curious, which is really fun. Had a lot of really, really great discussions, just talking and talking about things.”
The Soyuz MS-28/74S spacecraft, carrying commander Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, cosmonaut Sergey Mikaev and NASA astronaut Chris Williams, slowly backs away from the International Space Station early Sunday for a three-hour 20-minute trip back to Earth to close out a 241-day mission. NASA
Left behind aboard the station were NASA Crew 12 commander Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot and cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. Meir took over command of the station from Kud-Sverchkov during a brief ceremony Saturday.
Also on board were Soyuz MS-29/75S commander Pyotr Dubrov, cosmonaut Anna Kikina and NASA astronaut Anil Menon, launched to the station from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on July 14 to replace Williams and his crewmates.
The Crew 12 fliers, launched last Feb. 13, will be replaced by a fresh NASA-sponsored crew launching from Florida on Sept. 12.
Williams is a former volunteer firefighter and emergency medical technician who went on to earn a Ph.D. in astrophysics from MIT. He was serving as a board-certified medical physicist at Harvard Medical School when he was selected to join NASA’s astronaut corps in 2021.
And that was the answer to a lifelong dream.
“As far back as I can remember, so when I was a little kid, I was always fascinated by exploration and, in particular, space,” he told an interviewer while aboard the station.
“I think it’s one of those things that a lot of kids have fascinations with, and I just never grew out of (it). It’s something that’s always been a big point of curiosity for me. … I never never let go of that dream throughout my life.”
After a change-of-command ceremony Saturday, the entire crew of the International Space Station embraced for a group hug as Soyuz MS-28 commander Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, cosmonaut Sergey Mikaev and NASA’s Chris Williams prepared for departure early Sunday. NASA
In another interview aboard the lab, he said the experience more than lived up to his expectations.
“I think being up here on the space station, one of the things that I’ve really appreciated is just looking out the window at the Earth, how much I appreciate it that I maybe didn’t appreciate otherwise,” he said.
“I think anybody that comes up here kind of turns into a little bit of a budding geologist when you see the amazing patterns of how things develop on Earth.”
Likewise, if he ever makes it to the moon, “I think that one of the things I’d be really excited to do is to just take some time and look around. … I think that’s something that sort of the human eye and the human brain, situated on the moon, can be really a unique sort of tool.
“And so I’d love to spend any free time I have sort of looking and drinking it all in.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/nasa-astronaut-joins-two-russians-in-trip-to-international-space-station/