The ball, called Telstar 18, was taken to the ISS in March by the Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov. It will return to Earth with the crew of the ISS-54/55 expedition and used in the first game of the tournament — Russia versus Saudi Arabia — on June 14.
"An official Telstar 18 ball was brought to the space station for this purpose and it's planned to be returned to Earth with the crew of the Soyuz MS-07 spacecraft on June 3," Roscosmos stated earlier.
Anton Shkaplerov and his counterparts, American Scott Tingle and Japanese Norishige Kanai, are expected to land in Kazakhstan later during the day.
Russia's first-ever FIFA World Cup will take place from June 14 to July 15 in 11 host cities: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Volgograd, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Saransk, Rostov-on-Don, Yekaterinburg, and Sochi.
