Update for Aug. 7: NASA and SpaceX have delayed the return of Crew-10 due to weather concerns.
“NASA and SpaceX are standing down from the Thursday undocking opportunity of the Crew-10 mission from the International Space Station due to high winds forecasted for the splashdown locations off the coast of California,” the agency wrote in a statement.
SpaceX and the agency are now looking to undock Crew-10’s Dragon spacecraft no earlier than 6:05 p.m. EDT on Friday (Aug. 8).
SpaceX’s Crew-10 astronauts will head home to Earth Friday (Aug. 8), and you can watch the action live.
The Crew-10 quartet’s Crew Dragon capsule, named Endurance, is scheduled to undock from the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday at 6:05 p.m. EDT (1805 GMT) and splash down 17.5 hours later at 11:33 a.m. on Saturday (Aug. 9).
You can watch it all live via NASA. Space.com will carry the feed as well, if the agency makes it available.
NASA’s stream will start at 3:45 p.m. EDT (1745 GMT) to cover the closing of the hatches between Endurance and the ISS, which is expected to occur at 4:20 pm. EDT (2020 GMT).
Coverage will resume at 5:45 p.m. EDT (2145 GMT), 20 minutes before undocking. There will then be a lengthy break, with the webcast picking up again on Saturday (Aug. 9) at 10:15 a.m. EDT (1415 GMT) for reentry and splashdown activities.
Splashdown is expected on Saturday at 11:33 a.m. EDT (1533 GMT), in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California. NASA will also hold a post-landing press conference on Saturday at 1:00 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT), if all goes to plan.
None of this is set in stone, however; the departure date could be pushed back if bad weather crops up in the splashdown zone.
Crew-10 launched on March 14 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and arrived at the ISS two days later. The mission consists of NASA’s Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Takuya Onishi of JAXA (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Kirill Peskov of Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos. McClain is Crew-10’s commander, Ayers is the pilot and Onishi and Peskov are mission specialists.
Their replacements are the four astronauts of SpaceX’s Crew-11 mission, who reached the orbiting lab on Saturday morning (Aug. 2).
Crew-10 has already ticked one important box on the journey home to Earth — a farewell ceremony, which the four astronauts and the other seven people currently living on the ISS held on Tuesday afternoon (Aug. 5).
“Crew-10 has had the absolute privilege of working here for the last four months, and we have so much gratitude for all of the ground teams that showed up every day to make this possible,” McClain said during the ceremony.
“We truly are very humbled to represent humanity, and we hope that we can be a reminder to others of the goodness of humanity and what we really can accomplish when we work together,” she added.
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