On December 11, 2015 at 13:18 UTC the Russian “Soyuz TMA-17M” landing capsule landed safely in a distance of 121 kilometers north-east from the city of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan.

The spacecraft delivered to Earth the 3 members of ISS’s Expedition 45 – Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui (油井 亀美也) and American astronaut Kjell Lindgren. They spent in space 142 days. Three other ISS crew members – Russian cosmonauts Sergey Volkov and Mikhail Kornienko as well as American astronaut Scott Kelly remained in orbit aboard the International Space Station as the Expedition 46 crew. The undocking of Soyuz TMA-17M marked the end of Expedition 45 and the start of Expedition 46.