Soyuz to land in few hours with 2 Rus 1 US astronaut

[UtwigMU]

http://www.nasa.gov/content/kotov-hands-over-station-control-to-wakata-during-change-of-command-ceremony/index.html#.Ux5HMM7EGis

Commander Oleg Kotov and Flight Engineers Mike Hopkins and Sergey Ryazanskiy, who will be heading back to Earth Monday evening after 166 days in space, teamed up for a descent drill to train for their upcoming departure. The three crewmates climbed into their Soyuz TMA-10M spacecraft docked at the station’s Poisk module to review various scenarios for Monday’s undocking and landing to make sure they are prepared for any emergency situation that might arise.

There will be live coverage.

[Dr Mordrid]

Hopefully no module separation anomalies so they can avoid another ballistic high-G re-entry.

The Ukraine thing, Russian threats over the last 3 years to curtail RD-180 rocket engine sales to the US and their continuing quality control problems are causing a firestorm over US astronauts flying on Soyuz. This to the point there is talk about accelerating the US Commercial Crew program. It's getting attention on both aerospace and major political sites.

With SpaceX revealimg their super-heavy booster plans, and its Raptor methane engine, there is also talk of ramping up Bigelow Aerospace's development of large expandable station modules. One of these, the BA-2100 Olympus, would launch on a super-heavy and have 2x the habitable volume of ISS.