NASA Astronaut Chris Williams Returns From ISS After 241-Day Soyuz Mission

Short answer: NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev landed safely in Kazakhstan on July 26, 2026, after spending 241 days aboard the International Space Station. Their Soyuz MS-28 return closed out Expedition 74 and left the station's next crew rotation under Expedition 75.

NASA said the spacecraft made a parachute-assisted landing southeast of Zhezkazgan at 5:27 a.m. Eastern time. The crew's return was confirmed by NASA's landing release and space-station updates; Associated Press reporting provides a secondary chronology and recovery-location cross-check.

What happened during the return

The Soyuz MS-28 crew undocked from the ISS on July 26 after the departing astronauts completed handover work with the incoming Expedition 75 crew. NASA's mission updates described the return sequence as undocking, a deorbit burn, atmospheric re-entry and parachute-assisted landing on the Kazakh steppe.

Williams was completing his first space mission. Kud-Sverchkov and Mikaev also completed the 241-day flight aboard the same spacecraft. NASA's official account says the trio orbited Earth 3,856 times and traveled more than 102 million miles, or about 164 million kilometers, during the mission.

Why the crew rotation matters

A crew landing is also an operational handover. NASA's incoming station crew arrived on July 14, and the Expedition 75 phase began after MS-28 undocked. That overlap lets the departing crew transfer procedures, experiment status and station-maintenance information before leaving the orbiting laboratory.

The arrangement shows why the ISS can function as a continuous research platform even when individual missions end. The station's science programme, maintenance work and emergency procedures depend on crews arriving before the previous crew departs, not on a single mission operating in isolation.

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What happens next

After landing, the crew was transferred for medical checks and recovery operations. NASA said Williams would return to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, while the Roscosmos astronauts would travel to their training base near Moscow.

The next station phase continues with Expedition 75's crew. The immediate operational priority is routine station science and maintenance, while mission teams on Earth review the completed 241-day flight and the data collected during the crew's time in orbit.

Source transparency

The primary source is NASA's July 26 landing release, supplemented by NASA's undocking update and return report. AP is used only as a secondary chronology check. Mission statistics and crew-status claims are attributed to NASA.