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Three residents of the International Space Station said an emotional goodbye to their fellow crew members on Monday as they prepared to hand over command.

Commander Alexander Misurkin handed over a ceremonial key to the space station to fellow Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, who takes command of the ISS for Expedition 55.

Misurkin, along with NASA Flight Engineers Mark Vande Hei and Joe Acaba of Expedition 54, are scheduled to return to Earth this week.

The trio will undock from the space station today and land on the steppe of Kazakhstan on February 28.

(Image: NASA TV) (Image: NASA TV) (Image: NASA TV)

Earlier this month, the Roscosmos astronauts broke the record for the longest Russian space walk.

Misurkin and Shkaplerov spent eight hours and 13 minutes outside the International Space Station.

(Image: Getty)

They smashed the previous record, set by Oleg Kotov and Sergei Ryazanskiy in December 2013, by six minutes.

The two spacemen set off on their walk at 10.34am on Friday February 2 and did not return until 6.47pm.

(Image: TASS) (Image: TASS) (Image: TASS) (Image: TASS)

During their record-breaking spacewalk, the pair put up a new electronics and telemetry box on one of the antenna to ensure better communications between Russian flight controllers and Russian modules.

Breathtaking images show them carrying out their work with their lights reflecting off their spacesuits.

Images show the cosmonauts hanging off the space station in zero gravity.

(Image: TASS) (Image: TASS) (Image: TASS)

Planet Earth can also be seen in the background lighting up the photographs with its bright blue hue.

The duo's maintenance quest was the 207th spacewalk at the International Space Station and the fifth-longest in human spaceflight history.