SpaceX’s Crew-10 astronauts will return to Earth today (Aug. 9) after living on the International Space Station for nearly five months, and you can watch the action live.
The mission’s Crew Dragon capsule, named Endurance, is scheduled to splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast today at 11:33 a.m. EDT (1533 GMT; 8:33 a.m. local California time).
You can watch the homecoming live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly via the space agency. Coverage will begin at 10:15 a.m. EDT (1415 GMT).
As its name suggests, Crew-10 is the 10th operational astronaut mission that SpaceX has flown to and from the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA, via the agency’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP).
The crewmembers are Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers of NASA, Takuya Onishi of JAXA (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Kirill Peskov of Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency. McClain commands Crew-10, Ayers is the pilot and Onishi and Peskov are mission specialists.
The flight launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on March 14 and arrived at the orbiting lab two days later. Crew-10’s four astronauts soon set to conducting science work, which consumed much of their time over the ensuing months.
“During their stay in space, the crew studied space-caused mental and physical changes in astronauts, blood flow from the brain to the heart, future lunar navigation techniques and more,” NASA officials wrote in a blog post on Monday (Aug. 4).
The wheels for Crew-10’s departure began turning last Saturday (Aug. 2), when SpaceX’s four-person Crew-11 mission arrived at the ISS. The Crew-10 astronauts spent a few days advising their replacements, then set their minds to gearing up for the return to Earth — and reflecting on their orbital experience.
“We got to accomplish a lot of really amazing operational things,” Ayers said during a farewell ceremony on Tuesday (Aug. 5).
“We got to see some amazing views, and we have had some really big belly laughs and a wonderful time together,” she added. “I think that [we’re] leaving with a heart full of gratitude, and [we’re] excited to see where the International Space Station goes after we get home.”
The hatches between Endurance and the ISS closed on Friday (Aug. 8) at 4:20 p.m. EDT (2020 GMT), and the capsule undocked about two hours later, at 6:15 p.m. EDT (2205 GMT). Endurance then began maneuvering its way back to Earth, setting up its planned splashdown today.
It will be the first Pacific Ocean return for a SpaceX CCP mission; all previous such flights have come down off the Florida coast. SpaceX recently shifted to West Coast reentries for all of its Dragon missions, both crewed and uncrewed, to minimize the chance that falling space debris could damage property or injure people.
Crew-10 won’t be the first SpaceX astronaut mission of any type to land in the Pacific, however; the private Fram2 and Axiom 4 flights did so earlier this year.
Crew-10 is the first spaceflight for Ayers and Peskov and the second for McClain and Onishi. Onishi served as commander of the ISS’ current Expedition 73 from April until this past Tuesday, when he handed the reins over to cosmonaut Sergey Ryzhikov.
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