Home-Bound Station Crew Set For 2nd Attempt To Depart Space Station

Two Russian cosmonauts are preparing to make a second attempt to return to Earth tonight after trouble with hooks and latches holding their spacecraft to the International Space Station stymied an initial try earlier today.

Outgoing station commander Alexander Skvortsov and Flight Engineers Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Mikhail Kornienko will climb into their Russian Soyuz spacecraft about 6:45 p.m. and then try to undock from the outpost a little after 10 p.m.

You can watch live coverage of the hatch closure here in The Flame Trench starting at 6:15 p.m. Click the NASA TV box on the right side of the page to launch our NASA TV viewer and live coverage.

Live coverage of the undocking will begin at 9:45 p.m., and coverage of atmospheric reentry and landing will begin at midnight. The deorbit burn is scheduled for 12:32 a.m. Saturday and the Soyuz is expected to land on the arid steppes of central Kazakhstan at 1:21 a.m. Saturday.