After spending almost five months on the multinational Space Station (ISS), a four-person multinational team of astronauts has begun their journey back to Earth. Crew-10 left the ISS on Friday in a SpaceX Dragon capsule. The capsule undocked at 2215 GMT. Their homecoming marks the end of the 10th crew rotation trip under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. This program works with commercial businesses to send astronauts to and from the space station.
There are four astronauts on the crew: Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers from NASA, Takuya Onishi from Japan, and Kirill Peskov from Russia. They will splash down off the coast of California at 1533 GMT on Saturday, ending a trip that lasted more than 17 hours inside the capsule. The Dragon capsule’s return to Earth will be carefully planned. The atmosphere will slow its drop, and then huge parachutes will slow it down even more before it lands in the water. A SpaceX recovery ship will then pick up the capsule and its passengers, who will be inhaling Earth’s air for the first time in months.
The Crew-10 astronauts did a lot of scientific experiments while they were in space. For example, they studied how plants grow and how microgravity affects living cells.
Their mission began in March and was especially important since it allowed Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, two U.S. astronauts who had been stuck on the space station for nine months, to come home. Wilmore and Williams were on the first crewed voyage of the Boeing Starliner in June 2024. The mission was supposed to last only eight days at first. But the Starliner spacecraft had difficulties with its propulsion system, which made it unsafe to return and kept the crew in space until the Crew-10 mission arrived. NASA has now said that Butch Wilmore, an experienced astronaut, has chosen to retire after 25 years of service.
Crew-10 is coming back, but Crew-11 has already taken their position on the ISS. They entered the station last week for a six-month mission. The new crew is made up of U.S. astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui, and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov.