Left to right, Crew-10 Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov, NASA astronauts Nichole Ayers and Anne McClain, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi pose for a group portrait inside the International Space Station’s Kibo laboratory module. NASA Photo
Aug. 8 (UPI) — Members of the Crew-10 were preparing on Friday night to depart from the International Space Station aboard the Dragon 9 spacecraft.
The undocking was scheduled for 6:05 p.m. EDT, with splashdown targeted for 11:33 a.m. Saturday off the Southern California coast. This will be the first time a crewed mission will splash down in the Pacific Ocean after SpaceX’s recovery ship Shannon moved in December from Port Canaveral, Fla., to near Long Beach.
Afterward, the four Crew-10 members will be flown to Houston.
The undocking of the Dragon, called Endurance, was scheduled for Thursday afternoon, but high winds in the splashdown area delayed it.
Those aboard the NASA/Space X Crew-10 are NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov. Science samples will return with them.
“Crew-10 has had the absolute privilege of working here for the last four months, and we have so much gratitude for all of the ground teams that showed up every day to make this possible,” McClain said during a farewell ceremony on Tuesday on the space station.
“We truly are very humbled to represent humanity, and we hope that we can be a reminder to others of the goodness of humanity and what we really can accomplish when we work together,” she added.
It was Endurance’s fourth mission dating to 2021.
SpaceX’s Crew-11 members Zena Cardman, Mike Fincke, Kimiya Yui and Oleg Platonov docked at the space station Saturday.