Expedition 50 Crew Hands Over the Space Station to Expedition 51
The reins of the International Space Station were passed from NASA’s Shane Kimbrough to NASA’s Peggy Whitson during a ceremony on the orbital outpost April 9. Kimbrough is returning to Earth April 10 with his Expedition 50 crewmates, Sergey Ryzhikov and Andrey Borisenko of Roscosmos in the Soyuz MS-02 spacecraft for a landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan to complete a 173-day mission. Whitson remains on the station as commander of Expedition 51 along with Flight Engineers Oleg Novitskiy of Roscosmos and Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency.