No return to Earth in any spacecraft is over until it’s over. That’s especially so if the spacecraft you’re talking about is the Soyuz, the hard-working, iron-man of Russia’s space fleet. Soyuz boosters and spacecraft have been flying since the 1960s, covering a stretch that has seen the U.S. fly—and retire—the Geminis, Apollos and space shuttles.
But the ruggedness of the Soyuz ships does not mean a ride home in one is easy, a fact that space station astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Sergei Volkov will learn anew on Tuesday at about 4:15 p.m. E.T., when they climb into their Soyuz to begin the seven-hour process that will culminate in their thumping down on the very snowy steppes of Kazakhstan just before midnight. Along the way, they will experience a harrowing, high-speed ride that Kelly has compared to “going over Niagara Falls in a barrel—that’s on fire.”
TIME will be live-streaming the entire reentry process here, beginning at 4:15 p.m. The NASA livestream will occasionally switch on and off through the afternoon and evening, but during those times you’ll be able to automatically watch highlights above.
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TIME has been following the year-long mission of cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko and American astronaut Scott Kelly, in a video series that can be viewed here. A YEAR IN SPACE, a documentary film by TIME and PBS, premieres Wednesday, March 2 at 8 p.m. E.T. on PBS.
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Write to Jeffrey Kluger at jeffrey.kluger@time.com