On May 23, 2017, Whitson performed her tenth career EVA with Fischer. They replaced a backup multiplexer-demultiplexer (MDM) unit that had failed on May 20, 2017. The duration was 2 hours and 46 minutes, making Whitson's cumulative EVA time more than 60 hours, placing her third on the list for most EVA time.^[39]

On June 1, 2017, Whitson passed over the command of the International Space Station to Fyodor Yurchikhin, who was named commander of Expedition 52 until he, Whitson and Jack Fischer returned to Earth aboard Soyuz MS-04 in September 2017.^[40][41]

Whitson returned to earth on September 3, 2017 after she accrued a total of 665 days in space over the course of her career. This total was more time in space than any other woman worldwide and any other American of any gender.^[14] She is ranked 8 on the list of total time spent in space.^[42] Her Soyuz capsule landed in Kazakhstan shortly after sunrise Sunday—Saturday night back in the U.S.^[15] The duration of her stay in space during expeditions 50/51/52 was 289 days, 5 hours and 1 minute