NASA Crew-8 astronauts (from left) Alexander Grebenkin, Michael Barratt, Matthew Dominick and Jeanette Epps will land off the coast of Florida Friday morning after nearly eight months aboard the International Space Station. Credit: SpaceX
Four NASA astronauts will land Friday morning after spending more than 200 days aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
The four-person crew of NASA’s Crew-8 mission – made up of NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin – will return to Earth around dawn Friday, landing off the coast of Florida.
Crew-8 is the eighth astronaut rotation mission to the ISS under NASA’s Commercial Crew program. The initiative leverages commercial suppliers – namely SpaceX and Boeing – to help maintain a continuous human presence at the orbital laboratory, which has been occupied since 2000.
Here’s what to watch as the crew makes its return.
Extended stay
The Crew-8 astronauts launched aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule attached to the company’s Falcon 9 rocket on March 4, docking autonomously to the ISS the next day. Like the commercial crew’s previous missions, all flown on Dragons, the stay was scheduled to last six months.
That changed, however, when Boeing’s Starliner, the vehicle that NASA hopes to certify as a commercial vehicle alternative to the Dragon, became stuck in orbit. The initial return date of mid-August was pushed back further when Hurricanes Helene and Milton devastated the Space Coast, making landing risky.
TO FIND OUT MORE: When Crew-8 returns from space, its SpaceX capsule will set records
As a result, Dominick, Barratt, Epps, and Grebenkin were accompanied at various times by the crews of NASA Expeditions 70, 71, and 72, as well as Starliner astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams.
During their nearly eight-month stay, the Crew-8 astronauts performed more than 200 scientific experiments. Some were intended to address problems on Earth, such as degenerative diseases like Parkinson’s. Others have focused on preparing humans to explore beyond Earth’s orbit, studying how plants can be grown in space or how astronauts could 3D print fabrics, medicines and even food.
It was the first spaceflight mission for both Dominick and Epps, who became the first black woman to live on the ISS.
The return
NASA will begin live coverage of the Crew-8 splashdown on NASA+, the agency’s on-demand streaming service, starting Friday at 2:15 a.m. EDT.
Dragon undocked from the ISS on Wednesday evening and completed a series of startup burns, putting some distance between itself and the orbital laboratory. It will now perform a series of maneuvers to lower its orbit.
For much of the day Thursday, crew members will remain in a scheduled eight-hour sleep period. When they wake up in the evening, they will begin final preparations, donning their re-entry spacesuits and performing leak checks. The Dragon will jettison its trunk and begin a deorbit burn around 2:39 a.m. EDT before making a parachute-assisted splashdown about an hour later. A SpaceX recovery vehicle will recover the spacecraft and a helicopter will pick up the crew.
Not included in the return manifest of Crew 8 are Williams and Wilmore, who flew to the ISS in June for what was supposed to be a test mission of about a week. Instead, they will take a ride on the Dragon that launched NASA’s two-person Crew-9 mission, which is due to return in February after an eight-month stay.
Following the return of Crew-8, NASA will host a live Q&A session at 5 a.m. EDT on Friday with Richard Jones, deputy manager of Commercial Crew, Bill Spetch, manager of NASA ISS program operations and integration , and an unnamed SpaceX representative.
The Crew Dragon Try to force yourself the astronaut transport will set several records upon its return, including the longest flight of a crewed spacecraft: 225 days. Several astronauts have surpassed this milestone, but completed their missions using different spacecraft for launch and return. The milestone is expected to be broken in March, when a Soyuz MS-27 will carry Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergei Ryzhikov and Alexei Zubritsky and NASA astronaut Jonny Kim to the ISS for a planned eight-month mission.
With Crew-8 in the books, Try to force yourself will have carried out four expeditions to the ISS lasting several months and one private Axiom Space research flight, carrying a total of 18 crew members from around the world.
Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on FLY.
