Crew-8 undocks from International Space Station; it will be a more than 30-hour ride home
- by News 13
- Oct 23, 2024
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— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 23, 2024
At around 3:24 p.m. ET, the hatch between SpaceX Dragon’s spacecraft and the space station closed as the crew and the team back down on Earth went over a series of check lists before leaving.
The splashdown is expected to happen around 3:29 a.m. ET, Friday, about 34 hours after undocking. Before the new undocking date was announced, (more on that down below), NASA stated that depending on the time of the undocking and other factors like weather conditions, it could have taken between six to 39 hours for the Crew-8 to return to Earth.
No exact location has been given for the different splash zones, but Mother Nature has not been kind for the return home.
Trying to return home
Crew-8 members NASA astronauts Cmdr. Matthew Dominick, pilot Michael Barratt, and mission specialists Jeanette Epps and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin took off from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center back in March.
They spent their time conducting a series of experiments, but they were originally supposed to return home in August, but the mission was extended several times, especially as NASA investigated Boeing’s troubled Starliner capsule.
What was supposed to be an eightish-day mission for Starliner’s Cmdr. Barry “Butch” Wilmore and pilot Sunita “Suni” Williams in June turned into a months-long odyssey as their craft suffered from thruster issues and helium leaks.
NASA kept pushing their stay on the ISS as engineers launched an investigation, which resulted in the Crew-8 staying onboard longer in case an emergency occurred, where Wilmore and Williams would have needed SpaceX’s Dragon to return home.
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