Everything is prepared in Kazakhstan, where two Russian cosmonauts and one NASA astronaut are expected to land early on Wednesday morning.

The crew of three – Aleksey Ovchinin, Oleg Skripochka and Jeffrey Williams – are scheduled to leave the International Space Station (ISS) within a couple of hours, when the Soyuz manual craft will undock from the ISS at 2151 GMT.

The crew which is part of the expedition 48 have spent over 170 days in space. Their estimated time flying back to Earth is around three hours.

The Soyuz spacecraft is expected to land at 0114 GMT, some 150 kilometers (93 miles) from the town of Zhezkazgan in Kazakhstan. According to Russia's Mission Control Center (MCC), the landscape in the area is mostly flat, with no forests, large bodies of water or populated areas.

Russia's Federal Air Transport Agency, Rosaviatsiya, together with Russia's Defense Ministry, the Federal Space Agency, Roscosmos, and other state agencies have everything prepared for the search and rescue mission during the landing. Three airplanes, 12 helicopters and a number of other special machinery have been deployed to the area.

Meanwhile, three other space adventurers, Russia's Anatoly Ivanishin, American Kathleen Rubins and Japan's Takuya Onishi will stay on the ISS, until the next expedition arrives.