On December 14, 2017 at 08:38 UTC the Russian “Soyuz MS-05” landing capsule landed safely in Kazakhstan. The spacecraft delivered to Earth the 3 members of ISS’s Expedition 53 – Russian cosmonaut Sergey Ryazansky, American astronaut Randolph Bresnik and Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli. They spent in space 139 days. Three other ISS crew members – Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Misurkin; American astronauts Mark Vande Hei and Joseph Acaba remained in orbit aboard the International Space Station as the Expedition 54 crew. The undocking of Soyuz MS-05 marked the end of Expedition 53 and the start of Expedition 54.

On December 14, 2017 at 05:15 UTC the Russian “Soyuz MS-05” spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station to deliver to Earth the 3 members of Expedition 53 – Russian cosmonaut Sergey Ryazansky, American astronaut Randolph Bresnik and Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli.

On December 12, 2017 at 18:36 UTC the “Ariane-5ES” rocket-carrier was launched from Kourou Cosmodrome in French Guiana. The rocket orbited the four more “Galileo” navigation satellites: Galileo-19 ‘Nicole’, Galileo-20 ‘Zofia’, Galileo-21 ‘Alexandre’ and Galileo-22 ‘Irina’.

On December 10, 2017 at 16:35 UTC the Chang Zheng-3B/G2 (Long March-3B/G2) rocket-carrier was launched from Xichang Cosmodrome, Sichuan province, southwestern China. The rocket orbited the “AlComSat-1” Algerian communications satellite.

On 6 and 7 December 2017, 14 CubeSats were deployed from “Cygnus OA-8” spacecraft.

On December 6, 2017, the US "Cygnus” (CRS OA-8 ““Eugene Cernan”) unmanned supply spacecraft was undocked from the International Space Station. The spacecraft, which had been attached to the space station since November 14, 2017, was released by US astronaut Mark Vande Hei aboard the station using the orbiting complex's huge robotic arm at 13:11 UTC. It was the 8^th successful flight of "Cygnus” to the ISS. But Cygnus CRS-8 spacecraft’s mission is not over.