Space junk stays away from International Space Station HOUSTON, Nov. 17 (UPI) -- Suni Williams handed over command of the International Space Station Saturday to fellow U.S. astronaut Kevin Ford. Williams, Aki Hoshide of Japan and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko were scheduled to leave Sunday in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. They were expected to land Monday, local time, in Kazakhstan after 127 days in space, Florida Today reported. On Friday, ground crew for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration determined that an orbiting piece of space junk would miss the space station. Plans for a "debris avoidance maneuver" by having a Russian supply ship fire its engines were abandoned.