OREANDA-NEWS  The descent vehicle of the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft with three crew members of the International space station (ISS), as well as containers with samples from the hole drilled in the household compartment of the spacecraft, landed 147 km South-East of the city of Zhezkazgan in Kazakhstan at 08:03 Moscow time. This was reported on Thursday to journalists in the Mission Control Center (MCC).

"There is a fit. The descent vehicle with Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergei Prokopiev, NASA astronaut Serena Aunion and European space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst landed," the representative of the Center said.

The ship undocked from the ISS at 04:40 Moscow time.

Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, NASA and Canadian space Agency astronauts Anne McClane and David Saint-Jacques will continue their work at the ISS.

The next expedition to the ISS will depart from the Baikonur cosmodrome on March, 1 on the Soyuz MS-12 spacecraft. The new crew includes Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin, as well as NASA astronauts Nick Hague and Christina Koch. Ovchinin and Hague were due to arrive on the ISS in October 2018 but did not reach the station because of the accident of the carrier rocket "Soyuz-FG" 11 Oct.

It is also reported that the crew members who returned from the ISS were evacuated from the Soyuz MS-09 descent vehicle. "All three crew members of the Soyuz MS-09 have been successfully evacuated," the Center said. Earlier, the representative of the MCC said that "the health of the crew is good."

Prokopiev brought to Earth special insulating containers. They contain samples from the opening of the "Soyuz MS-09", taken during the spacewalk, as well as samples of micrometeorite protection of the ship.

Astronauts on the night of December, 12 performed spacewalk to inspect the holes in the skin of the "Union". They opened the insulation and anti-meteorite protection, examined and photographed the hole, and took samples from the surface. Operation on opening of anti-meteorite protection in space was carried out for the first time in the history of world cosmonautics.

Earlier Kononenko sent to Earth photographs of the samples and the holes in the living compartment of the " Soyuz MS-09".

A source in the power structures previously reported, that the samples taken during the space launch on December 11-12 from the "hole" in the "Soyuz MS-09", as well as from the part of the anti-meteorite protection of the ship will be transferred to the FSB laboratory for chemical analysis on December, 20. He specified that in the rocket and space industry there are no laboratories with a sufficient level of competence and technical equipment for such research. One of the tasks of the experts of the service, as the source said, is to determine the presence of sealant or glue in the samples taken, different from the one that the cosmonauts sealed the hole with on August, 30.