Expedition 74 Crew Receives Matryoshka Dolls after Landing in Kazakhstan

Expedition 74 Crew Receives Matryoshka Dolls after Landing in Kazakhstan

Traditional Russian matryoshka dolls depicting Expedition 74 NASA astronaut Chris Williams, left, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, and Sergei Mikaev of Russia were provided as gifts by the Russian search and recovery team and Roscosmos officials. The Russian Soyuz MS‑28 spacecraft touched down at 5:27a.m. CDT (3:27 p.m. local time), July 26, 2026, completing a parachute‑assisted landing on the Kazakh steppe southeast of Dzhezkazgan.

Matryoshka dolls (Russian: матрёшка), also known as stacking dolls, nesting dolls, Russian tea dolls, or Russian dolls, are a set of wooden dolls of decreasing size placed one inside another. A set of matryoshkas consists of a wooden figure, which separates at the middle, top from bottom, to reveal a smaller figure of the same sort inside, which has, in turn, another figure inside of it, and so on.

The first Russian nested doll set was made in 1890 by woodturning craftsman and wood carver Vasily Zvyozdochkin from a design by folk crafts painter Sergey Malyutin. 

NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Kud‑Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev of Russia wrapped up a 241‑day mission as members of Expeditions 73 and 74 aboard the International Space Station, orbiting Earth 3,856 times and traveling more than 102 million miles. Soyuz MS‑28 launched and docked with the International Space Station on Nov. 27, 2025. This flight marked the first mission for Williams and Mikaev and the second for Kud‑Sverchkov.

After routine post‑landing medical checks, recovery teams will fly the crew by helicopter to Karaganda, Kazakhstan. Williams then will board a NASA aircraft bound for the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Follow Expedition 75:

https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/

Expedition 75 Crew
Station Commander: Jessica Meir
Roscosmos (Russia) Flight Engineers: Andrey Fedyaev, Anna Kikina, Pyotr Dubrov

European Space Agency Flight Engineer: Sophie Adenot

NASA Flight Engineers: Jack Hathaway, Anil Menon

An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada.

Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls
Duration: 12 seconds
Date: July 26, 2026

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