The Soyuz MS-24 crew ship carrying astronaut Loral O’Hara, cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, and spaceflight participant Marina Vasilevskaya descends to Earth beneath its main parachute. Credit: NASA TV
Loral O’Hara completed a 204-day space mission, landing in Kazakhstan and marking the start of Expedition 71 on the ISS.
NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara ended her time in space with a parachute-assisted landing in the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft on the steppe of Kazakhstan, southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan, at 3:17 a.m. EDT (12:17 p.m. Kazakhstan time) on Saturday, April 6.
O’Hara, along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, and spaceflight participant Marina Vasilevskaya of Belarus, began the journey back to Earth at 11:55 a.m. when the Soyuz undocked from the International Space Station.
Expedition 70 Flight Engineer and NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara is photographed inside the NanoRacks Bishop airlock. Bishop can be uninstalled from its home on the Tranquility module for portable operations. It can also be used to stow cargo and extract or install payloads. Credit: NASA
O’Hara arrived at the International Space Station on September 15, 2023, spending 204 days in low Earth orbit.
During her 204 days aboard the station, O’Hara experienced:
- Approximately 3,264 orbits of Earth
- Approximately 86,555,554 statute miles traveled
- Eight spacecraft visiting the International Space Station, including two Roscosmos Progress cargo ships, one Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo spacecraft, one Roscosmos Soyuz, two crewed SpaceX Dragons, and two uncrewed SpaceX Dragons.
NASA astronaut and Expedition 70 Flight Engineer Loral O’Hara wears personal protective equipment during scieintific maintenance duties aboard the International Space Station’s Destiny laboratory module. Credit: NASA
Expedition 71 has formally begun aboard the station with NASA astronauts Michael Barratt, Matthew Dominick, Tracy Dyson, and Jeannette Epps as well as Roscosmos cosmonauts Nikolai Chub, Alexander Grebenkin, and Oleg Kononenko.
