The spacecraft is scheduled to undock from the station at 07:55 GMT. A few hours later, the ship will have to engage the propulsion system for braking and begin its descent from orbit. The Soyuz will then split into compartments and the main parachute will open over the crew capsule a few minutes before landing. The spacecraft is scheduled to land in Kazakhstan at 11:17 GMT.
Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio were originally expected to stay in Earth's orbit for 188 days, but had to extend their mission because the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft that was supposed to return them to Earth was damaged in December and could no longer be used for its intended purpose. The total duration of their mission on the ISS will be 371 days, a new world record for the duration of a spaceflight.
The remaining station crew consists of ISS Expedition 70 members — NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov, European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, who arrived at the ISS in late August as part of the SpaceX Crew-7 mission. Three additional crew members — Roscosmos' Nikolai Chub and Oleg Kononenko and NASA's Loral O'Hara - arrived at the station on September 15 aboard the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft.
In July 2022, Roscosmos and NASA signed an agreement on ISS cross-flights of Russian cosmonauts on American Crew Dragon spacecraft and American astronauts on Russian Soyuz MS spacecraft. The first such ship was the Soyuz MS-22, which flew with Rubio on board.