Updated on: December 9, 2025 / 1:16 AM EST / CBS News
A NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts strapped into their Soyuz ferry ship Monday evening, undocked from the International Space Station and plunged to an on-target landing on the frigid steppe of Kazakhstan early Tuesday to wrap up an eight-month mission.
With Soyuz commander Sergey Ryzhikov in the descent module’s center seat, flanked on his left by cosmonaut Alexey Zubritsky and on the right by NASA’s Jonny Kim, the Soyuz MS-27/73S undocked from the station at 8:41 p.m. ET.
After moving a safe distance away, the Soyuz braking rockets fired for four minutes and 42 seconds starting at 11:09 p.m., slowing the ship’s roughly 17,100-mph orbital speed by about 286 mph—enough to drop the far side of the orbit into Earth’s atmosphere.
Enduring re-entry temperatures of about 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit and rapid deceleration, the Soyuz descent module, suspended beneath a large orange-and-white parachute, touched down at 12:03 a.m. EST Tuesday (0503 UTC, 10:03 a.m. local time in Kazakhstan) and tipped onto its side.
Russian recovery crews and NASA support personnel quickly reached the charred capsule in sub-freezing conditions, opened the hatch, extracted the crew and performed initial medical checks as the trio began readjusting to gravity.
Kim briefly rested in a nearby recliner, appearing healthy and in good spirits. Recovery crews presented him with a nested matryoshka doll bearing his likeness. After fuller medical checks inside a heated inflatable tent, the crew was to be flown by helicopter to Dzhezkazgan, where Kim planned to board a NASA jet for the flight home to Johnson Space Center in Houston. Ryzhikov and Zubritsky were to return to Star City near Moscow for debriefings and family reunions.
Remaining aboard the station are NASA Crew 11 members Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui and cosmonaut Oleg Platonov. Also on board are Soyuz MS-28/74S commander Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, flight engineer Sergei Mikaev and NASA astronaut Christopher Williams, who arrived at the station on Nov. 27 to replace Ryzhikov, Zubritsky and Kim.
At a change-of-command ceremony on Sunday, Kim said the thing he will remember most from his eight months in space is “the bond that we shared together.” He added, “I firmly believe that the greatest quality of an astronaut, and a human, is not technical competence, or loyalty, or any of the myriad other things we like to ascribe to astronauts. It’s love. We always gave each other grace and had so much love for each other and everyone who supports us. I think that is what makes space exploration possible.”
During their stay, Kim and his crewmates traveled about 104 million miles over 3,920 orbits. Kim concentrated on research and maintenance in the U.S. segment of the station, while Ryzhikov and Zubritsky conducted two spacewalks.
Kim, the son of South Korean immigrants and a father of three, has an unusually broad résumé: former Navy SEAL, combat veteran and Harvard Medical School graduate. In a pre-launch interview he said he had “some terrible moments” in combat and became “very burnt out from the combat, from the war and the loss,” which led him to pursue medicine as a way to continue serving. Already a SEAL team combat medic, he was accepted to Harvard Medical School. He said he deliberately downplayed his SEAL background in the hospital so colleagues and patients would regard him “as dependable and proficient and a good physician” based on his actions, not his past.