Soyuz TMA-09M was a Russian Soyuz mission to the International Space Station. It transported three members of the Expedition 36 crew to the space station. The Soyuz remained docked to the space station during Expeditions 36 and 37 to serve as an emergency escape vehicle. The spacecraft landed on 11 November 2013, carrying the same three cosmonauts who were aboard for launch. The crew of Soyuz TMA-09M consisted of Fyodor Yurchikhin of Roskosmos, Karen Nyberg of NASA and Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency.

Fyodor Nikolayevich Yurchikhin is a Russian cosmonaut of Greek descent, engineer and RSC Energia test-pilot who has flown on five spaceflights. His first spaceflight was a 10-day Space Shuttle mission STS-112. His second was a long-duration stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS) as a flight engineer for Expedition 15; for this mission he was launched in the Soyuz TMA-10 spacecraft. He has undertaken two further long-duration stays aboard the ISS, as a crew member of Expedition 24 / 25. For this mission he was launched with the spacecraft Soyuz TMA-19, and he landed in November 2010, also with the Soyuz TMA-19 spacecraft. He served as Soyuz commander for his fourth mission aboard Soyuz TMA-09M, as flight engineer for Expedition 36 and ISS commander for Expedition 37. In April 2017, Yurchikhin launched on Soyuz MS-04 for the fifth spaceflight of his career, a six-month mission to the ISS as part of Expedition 51 and 52, for which he was the commander.