Weather clears for SpaceX Crew-8 to head home to Florida

The four members of the SpaceX Crew-8 mission climbed on board the Crew Dragon Endeavour on Wednesday to prepare for their return trip to Earth from the International Space Station targeting a splashdown early Friday off the coast of Florida.

NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps, along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, closed the hatch set for undocking from the ISS at 5:05 p.m. Eastern time.

The quartet launched from Kennedy Space Center atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket back on March 4, arriving at the ISS one day later.

By landing, they will have spent about 236 days in space.

They have been preparing to depart since welcoming the Crew-9 mission in Crew Dragon Freedom to the ISS on Sept. 29, which brought up NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. That duo will stay at the ISS as part of Expedition 72 for another five months with a planned return home with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who have been on the ISS since June 6 after arriving on Boeing’s Starliner on the Crew Flight Test mission.

Starliner flew back to Earth minus its crew, as NASA opted to keep Williams and Wilmore safely on board the ISS after concerns with Starliner’s propulsion system.

Crew-9’s arrival brought the ISS population temporarily up to 11, but will drop back to seven when Crew-8 departs.

That departure, though, has been delayed repeatedly by poor weather conditions off the coast of Florida, including Hurricane Milton. SpaceX has eight potential sites in either the Atlantic or Gulf of Mexico that could be the primary splashdown site for the spacecraft.

SpaceX’s Dragon will autonomously undock from the ISS, perform a series of departure burns to move away from the station, and then make a series of orbit-lowering maneuvers during a 34-hour trip home targeting a 3:29 a.m. landing Friday.

Endeavour was the first SpaceX Crew Dragon to fly with humans and is the fleet leader, having already completed the Demo-2, Crew-2, Axiom Space Ax-1 and Crew-6 missions, all docking with the ISS.

It’s one of four active Crew Dragon spacecraft that have now flown 15 crewed missions carrying 56 humans through space, including five private missions on top of 10 for NASA.

Williams and Wilmore will be the first astronauts to fly on both Starliner and Crew Dragon when they return.

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