Space & Cosmos

SpaceX Crew-8 returns home to Florida as weather improves

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Four members of the SpaceX Crew 8 mission boarded Crew Dragon Endeavor on Wednesday in preparation for the return trip to Earth from the International Space Station, with the goal of splashing down early Friday off the coast of Florida.

NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Janet Epps, along with Roscosmos astronaut Alexander Grebenkin, were set to undock from the ISS at 5:05 p.m. ET. closed the hatch.

The quartet launched from Kennedy Space Center on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on March 4 and arrived at the ISS a day later.

It will spend approximately 236 days in space before landing.

Since welcoming Crew Dragon Freedom’s Crew 9 mission to the ISS on September 29, they have been preparing for departure. Accompanying the mission were NASA astronaut Nick Haig and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov. The pair will stay on the ISS for an additional five months as part of Expedition 72, and will return home with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. Both astronauts have been on the ISS since June 6, after arriving on a Boeing Starliner crew flight test mission. .

Due to concerns about Starliner’s propulsion system, NASA chose to keep Williams and Wilmore safely on the ISS, and Starliner returned to Earth without its crew.

With the arrival of Crew 9, the ISS’s population was temporarily reduced to 11, but returned to seven when Crew 8 departed.

However, its departure has been repeatedly delayed by severe weather off the coast of Florida, including Hurricane Milton. SpaceX has eight potential primary landing sites for its spacecraft, either in the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico.

SpaceX’s Dragon autonomously undocked from the ISS, performed a series of departure burns to leave the station, and completed a series of orbits during its 34-hour return with the goal of landing at 3:29 a.m. Friday. Perform the lowering operation.

Endeavor is the first SpaceX Crew Dragon to fly alongside humans and is the leader of the fleet, having already completed missions Demo-2, Crew-2, Axiom Space Ax-1, and Crew-6. All are docked to the ISS.

It is one of four Crew Dragon spacecraft in active service and has flown 15 manned missions to space carrying 56 humans, including NASA’s 10 In addition to this, five civilian missions are also included.

Williams and Willmore will be the first astronauts to fly both Starliner and Crew Dragon upon their return.

2024 Orlando Sentinel. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Source: Weather improves for SpaceX Crew-8 return to Florida (October 23, 2024) from https://phys.org/news/2024-10-weather-spacex-crew-home-florida.html Retrieved October 23, 2024

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