Live Coverage: Soyuz hatches shut at ISS

A homebound crew boarded a Soyuz spacecraft at the International Space Station today and is preparing to depart the outpost prior to a fiery plunge back through the atmosphere to a central Asian landing site.

You can watch a live webcast of NASA TV coverage of the departure and undocking as well as the Soyuz deorbit burn and landing right here in The Flame Trench. Simply click the NASA TV box on the right hand side of the page to launch our NASA TV viewer and be sure to refresh this page for periodic updates.

Undocking is scheduled for 8:15 p.m.; the deorbit burn is slated for 10:44 p.m. and landing in Kazakhstan is scheduled for 11:36 p.m.

The hatches between the Soyuz and the station swung shut about 5:13 p.m. after the joined crews of Expedition 17 and Expedition 18 held a short, informal farewell ceremony in the U.S. Harmony module, which is a pressurized passageway between station segments.

Expedition 17 commander Sergei Volkov strapped into the center seat of the Soyuz TMA-12, which is shown on the right in the NASA screen grab above. Flight engineer Oleg Kononenko is in the left seat and American space tourist Richard Garriot is in the right seat.

Here's a graphic that shows where the TMA-12 is located. It is moored to the Pirs Docking Compartment, a keg-shaped module that doubles as an airlock on the Russian side of the station.

The Soyuz TMA-13 vehicle is the spacecraft that the Expedition 18 crew flew to the station last week. Led by station commander Michael Finicke, his crew includes flight engineer Yury Lonchakov. Garriott launched with them and is returning to Earth with the Expedition 17 crew.

The hatch closure followed a short, informal farewell ceremony in the U.S. Harmony module, a pressurized passageway between the U.S. side of the station and laboratory modules owned and operated by the European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

The image here shows (from left to right) Kononenko, Lonchakov, Volkov, Fincke, Garriott and Gregory Chamitoff, who served as a flight engineer on Expedition 17 and is serving as a flight engineer on Expedition 18. Chamitoff flew up aboard shuttle Discovery in June and will be returning to Earth aboard shuttle Endeavour next month.

Here's a shot of Volkov making his way toward the Soyuz: