Photos: Soyuz TMA-22 Departs from the Space Station

The Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft departs from the International Space Station and heads toward a landing on April 27, 2012. Inside the Soyuz, NASA astronaut Dan Burbank, Expedition 30 commander; along with Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov, Soyuz commander, and Anatoly Ivanishin, flight engineer, were looking forward to putting their feet on terra firma for the first time in more than five months onboard the station, where they served as members of the Expedition 29 and 30 crews. At the time of this photo the two spacecraft were over the northwestern Pacific Ocean. With the aid of sun glint, ice floes can be seen clearly. ISS031-E-005056 (27 April 2012) — high res (1.1 M) low res (56 K)

Soyuz TMA-22, with three Expedition 30 crew members onboard, appears as a tiny object in the lower left corner of this image photographed by one of the Expedition 31 crew members currently onboard the International Space Station, partially visible at right foreground. A short time earlier, the two spacecraft began their relative separation, thus cutting in half the number of personnel onboard the orbital outpost for the time being. The station was over the northwestern Pacific Ocean. Seen in the picture also are the Sea of Okhotsk, ice floes, part of the Kamchatka Peninsula, the Tartar Strait, highlighted with sun glint, and Sakhalin Island. ISS031-E-005010 (27 April 2012) — high res (1.6 M) low res (83 K)