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April 6, 2024 RELEASE: 24-050 NASA Astronaut Loral O’Hara,
Crewmates Return from Space Station
NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara returned to Earth on April 6, 2024, after a six-month research mission aboard the International Space Station. NASA astronaut
Loral O'Hara returned to Earth after a six-month
research mission aboard the International Space Station on Saturday, along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, and Belarus spaceflight participant Marina Vasilevskaya. The trio departed the space station aboard the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft at 11:54 p.m. EDT on April 5, and made a safe, parachute-assisted landing at 3:17 a.m., April
6 (12:17 p.m. Kazakhstan time), southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan. O’Hara
launched
Sept. 15, 2023, alongside Roscosmos cosmonauts
Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub, who both will remain aboard the space station to complete a one-year mission. Novitskiy and Vasilevskaya launched aboard Soyuz MS-25 on March 23 along with NASA astronaut Tracy C. Dyson, who
will remain aboard the orbiting laboratory until this fall. O’Hara spent a total of 204 days in space as part of her first spaceflight. Novitskiy has logged a total of 545 days in space across four spaceflights and Vasilevskaya
has spent 14 days in space as part of her first spaceflight. Supporting NASA’s
Artemis campaign, O’Hara’s mission helped prepare for
exploration of the Moon and build foundations for crewed missions to Mars. She completed approximately 3,264 orbits of the Earth and a journey of more than 86.5 million miles. O’Hara worked on
scientific activities
aboard the space station, including investigating heart health, cancer treatments, and space manufacturing techniques during her stay aboard the orbiting laboratory. Following post-landing medical checks, the crew will return to the recovery staging city in Karaganda, Kazakhstan. O’Hara will then board a NASA plane bound for her
return to the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. With the undocking of the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft with O’Hara, Novitskiy and Vasilevskaya, Expedition 71 officially began aboard the station. NASA astronauts
Michael Barratt,
Matthew Dominick,
Tracy C. Dyson, and
Jeannette Epps,
as well as Roscosmos cosmonauts Nikolai Chub, Alexander Grebenkin, and Oleg Kononenko make up Expedition 71 and will remain on the orbiting laboratory until this fall. Learn more about space station activities by following
@space_station
and @ISS_Research
on X, as well as the ISS
Facebook, ISS
Instagram, and the
space station blog. -end- TO RECEIVE NASA NEWS RELEASES NASA news releases and other information are available automatically by sending an e-mail to hqnews-join@newsletters.nasa.gov (no
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