With a mission that was anything but mundane, Soyuz MS-09 with its three-person crew returned to Earth after more than 6 months in orbit on the International Space Station. The Soyuz MS-09 vehicle rose to high public profile in August when a hole that resulted in a small atmospheric leak aboard the Station was discovered in its Orbital Module.
That hole was determined to have been drilled on the ground during the spacecraft’s manufacturing and led to a rather dramatic spacewalk earlier in December that saw cosmonauts cut into the protective casing around MS-09’s Orbital Module to conduct further investigation of the issue.
Wrapping up its mission, Soyuz MS-09 and its three-person crew from Russia, ESA, and NASA, undocked from the International Space Station at 20:42 EST (01:42 UTC on Thursday, 20 December) before landing on the Kazakh steppe at around 00:03 EST (0503 UTC) on Thursday, 20 December.