Four space travelers from the ISS on their way to Earth

After about half a year in space, two Americans, a Russian and a Japanese have left the International Space Station ISS. On board a "Crew Dragon" from Elon Musk's private space company SpaceX, the four astronauts undocked from the ISS on Saturday morning, the US space agency NASA said. The capsule is scheduled to arrive on Earth on Sunday night.

Four space travelers from the ISS on their way to Earth © APA - Austria Press Agency

Actually, the "Crew-5" - consisting of NASA astronaut Nicole Aunapu Mann and her NASA colleague Josh Cassada as well as the Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata and the Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina - should have left the ISS a few days ago. Due to the weather, however, the undocking had been repeatedly postponed.

The "Crew-5" was launched in October from the Cape Canaveral spaceport - the first joint launch by NASA astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut from American soil since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine. Further on board the ISS are the Russian cosmonauts Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin as well as NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and the "Crew-6", which just arrived a few days ago and consists of the Americans Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg, the Russian Andrei Fedyaev and the Emirati Sultan al-Nijadi.