{"id":782310,"date":"2026-07-24T18:23:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T18:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/782310\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T18:23:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T18:23:10","slug":"a-nasa-astronaut-with-potomac-roots-is-returning-to-earth-sunday-heres-how-to-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/782310\/","title":{"rendered":"A NASA astronaut with Potomac roots is returning to Earth Sunday. Here\u2019s how to watch."},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After about eight months and 250 miles above Earth in the International Space Station (ISS), NASA astronaut Chris Williams \u2013 who grew up in Potomac and graduated from Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring in 2001 \u2013 is scheduled to return to Earth Sunday.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Williams, 42, is expected to land on the steppe of Kazakhstan on Sunday at 6:25 a.m. Eastern Time in a parachute-assisted landing. The location, an immense, open grassland in Central Asia is where Russian Soyuz spacecraft commonly land after returning from the ISS.<\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-335087 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/resizespace-pic.png.png.jpg\" alt=\"001C7812.NEF\" width=\"1200\" height=\"800\"\/>Astronaut Chris Williams captured the aurora australis (southern lights) crowning the Earth\u2019s atmosphere and a robotic arm stretching from a power and data grapple fixture attached to the Harmony module. Photo credit: NASA\/Chris Williams<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">NASA will be streaming the event on NASA+ (the agency\u2019s free streaming platform), the NASA app, third-party streaming services and social media platforms including <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/NASA\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.twitch.tv\/nasa\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Twitch<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/nasa\" rel=\"nofollow\">X<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/nasa\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube<\/a>. More information on streaming the landing can be found <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/live\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After landing, Williams will travel to NASA\u2019s Johnson Space Center in Houston to undergo post-flight medical evaluations. NASA constantly tracks astronauts before, during and after spaceflight through their blood and urine to better understand how missions over several months affect the human body. By doing so, they can attempt to develop countermeasures for future missions.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Williams, who now lives in Houston, has been busy in the ISS conducting scientific research and experiments, carrying out two spacewalks, and helping maintain the orbiting laboratory.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He has also found time to nurture his photography hobby. He\u2019s been taking lots of photos while in space and should have a full album from his travels to share with his parents, who still live in Potomac.<\/p>\n<p>An earlier version of this story appeared in the  issue of Bethesda Magazine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After about eight months and 250 miles above Earth in the International Space Station (ISS), NASA astronaut Chris&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":782311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[79,193],"class_list":["post-782310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=782310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/782311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=782310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=782310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=782310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}