Ultimately, the remainder of the rendezvous was nominal and TMA-12M successfully docked with the ISS at 23:53 UTC on 27 March, five minutes ahead of the rescheduled time, with hatch opening between the two spacecraft occurring at 02:35 UTC on 28 March. Upon their arrival, Skvortsov, Artemyev and Swanson joined the crew of Expedition 39, as part of which they remained until they transferred to the crew of Expedition 40 after the May 2014 departure of Soyuz TMA-11M. The crew members of TMA-12M remained aboard the ISS until September 2014, when the spacecraft undocked and returned to Earth as scheduled. Expedition 40 commander Steven Swanson formally handed over command of the ISS to Expedition 41 commander Maksim Surayev on 9 September, the day before the mission's scheduled departure. After closing the hatches separating the station and Soyuz at 19:35 UTC on 10 September, TMA-12M undocked from the International Space Station at 23:01 UTC, ending the Expedition 40 mission and transferring control of the station to Expedition 41. The spacecraft executed a de-orbit burn at 01:30 UTC on 11 September and began re-entry at 2:01 UTC with landing occurring successfully in the Kazakh Steppe region of Kazakhstan at 2:23 UTC.