Three space-flyers boarded their Soyuz spacecraft, undocked, deorbited and landed back on Earth early Monday morning local Kazakh time.
Soyuz MS-01 landed on the Step of Kazakhstan at 9:58 a.m. Oct. 30 (03:58 GMT / 11:58 p.m. EDT Oct. 29). Returning to Earth after 115 days in space were Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin, Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi and NASA astronaut Kate Rubins.
Read MoreWith the Oct. 21 docking of Soyuz MS-02 to the International Space Station's Poisk module, the crew size for the football field-sized orbiting outpost returned to six, albeit for only about two weeks.
Launched Oct. 19 from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, three members of Expedition 49 took a 34-orbit route to catch up with the ISS and test new equipment on the upgraded Soyuz-MS variant.
Read MoreAfter six months docked to the aft port of the Zvezda module of the International Space Station, the unpiloted Russian Progress MS-02 cargo ship left the outpost. A couple hours later, it was commanded to burn up over the Pacific Ocean.
Undocking occurred at 5:37 a.m. EDT (09:37 GMT) Oct. 14. Loaded springs initially pushed Progress away from ISS. The two passively separated for about 3 minutes. Once the craft was about 20 meters away from the orbiting outpost, a departure burn was initiated to increase the distance from ISS ahead of the deorbit burn.
Read MoreAfter discovering a short circuit during pre-launch tests, Soyuz MS-02 was delayed from its Sept. 23 liftoff date. It has since been scheduled for no earlier than Nov. 1, according to the Russian news agency TASS.
As such, other Russian flights to and from the International Space Station will have to be moved around to accommodate this slip.
Read MoreOver the last few days, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket, delivered a Dragon cargo ship to the International Space Station and, as a bonus, successfully landed the first stage of the booster on a platform in the Atlantic Ocean. It's safe to say that this was one of the best weeks in the NewSpace company's history.
Read MoreOrbital Velocity is designed to be "living time capsule" about the International Space Station.
This project is an attempt to bridge an information gap between space agencies and companies, as well as a public that supports space endeavors with their tax dollars. Despite the importance of the space station, the general public doesn't always know what is happening aboard this amazing complex on a regular basis. Research being conducted isn't always readily available and what information is out there can sometimes be difficult to understand. Some people aren't even aware there is an active space program, let alone a space station.
Orbital Velocity hopes to change that by building a database of information through blogs, a website, small videos and longer documentary-like series'.
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