Crew-10 poised for return to Earth after months at ISS

Date:
Thu, 07 Aug 2025 02:22:20 +0000

Description:
Crew Dragon C210 Endurance and the Crew-10 astronauts are preparing to return to Earth following The post Crew-10 poised for return to Earth after months
at ISS appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com .

FULL STORY ======================================================================

Crew Dragon C210 Endurance and the Crew-10 astronauts are preparing to return to Earth following over 140 days in orbit aboard the International Space Station. The mission, commanded by NASA astronaut Anne McClain, is scheduled to undock from the Station on Wednesday, Aug. 6, at 18:05 UTC before
splashing down off the west coast of the United States about six hours later.

Crew-10, composed of astronauts from NASA, Japan, and Russia, will hand over its duties to the recently launched Crew-11 astronauts. Crew-11s Zena
Cardman, Michael Fincke, Kimiya Yui, and Oleg Platonov are taking over in place of McClain, Nichole Ayers, Japans Takuya Onishi, and Russias Kirill Peskov.





Japan, a key member of the International Space Station (ISS) partnership from the beginning of the program, now will have a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut aboard the Station for two straight Expedition increments, totaling roughly one year. The Japanese human presence on ISS
will end, at least for the moment, when JAXAs Yui leaves the Station after a handover to Crew-12. The Expedition 73 crew, including Crew-10 and Crew-11, pose before Crew-11s departure. (Credit: NASA/Nichole Ayers)

Roscosmos Platonov is taking over for Crew-10s Peskov and will be replaced by Oleg Artemyev of Crew-12. Russia and the United States are continuing an agreement to launch their agencies astronauts on each others crew vehicles to ensure redundancy and a continued presence on ISS if either the Soyuz or Crew Dragon were grounded due to a mishap.

After Crew-10s undocking, Endurance will spend several hours in orbit before deorbiting and splashing down in the Pacific. The current splashdown time on Wednesday, Aug. 6, is 5:32 PM PDT (00:32 UTC Thursday, Aug. 7), and Crew-10 will be the first NASA ISS crewed mission to splash down in the Pacific Ocean off California.

Crew-10s splashdown off of California follows the return of the Fram2 and Axiom-4 missions which were the first to use the west coast. SpaceX changed Crew Dragons return area to the west coast due to Dragons trunk being jettisoned after the deorbit burn.

This revised jettison procedure, decided upon after large pieces from Dragon trunks unexpectedly survived reentry, would risk the trunk reentering over land on a Florida-bound trajectory. Weather also tends to be better for landings off of southern California than off Floridas coasts; a number of Florida returns have been delayed for days on end due to rough weather and
sea state conditions.

SpaceX will have the recovery ship Shannon on site to retrieve Endurance and its crew. Endurances exact splashdown site will be off of either Oceanside, San Diego, or Long Beach, depending on exact conditions at the time of landing.

While Shannon is still on duty, the recovery ship Megan has been retired
since SpaceX does not need two active ships like it did when landings were conducted on both sides of the Florida peninsula. Recovery ship Shannon conducting its first Crew Dragon recovery in the Pacific for the Fram2 mission. (Credit: SpaceX)

After splashdown, a recovery crew will converge on the floating Crew Dragon and check for any hydrazine leaks from the spacecrafts thrusters. Once the spacecraft is given the all clear, Shannon will draw closer to the bobbing spacecraft and use its retrieval gear to bring Endurance onto its recovery deck.

Crew members aboard Shannon , including a medical team, will help the astronauts exit the capsule before wheeling them to a medical area on the ship. After the astronauts are medically checked and assuming everything is well, they will be flown off of the ship by helicopter to shore before flying back to Houston.

One mission, Crew-8, saw the astronauts taken to a hospital in Pensacola, Florida, after these checks out of an abundance of caution, but typically returning crews are flown back to Houston after they leave the ship. Three of the astronauts returned to Houston after being discharged while one was hospitalized for a time before leaving. An illustration of the Polar cold stowage facility. (Credit: University of Alabama-Birmingham Center for Biophysical Sciences and Engineering)

Besides the Crew-10 astronauts, Endurance will also take home critical
science samples aboard the Polar portable cold storage facility used to transport temperature-sensitive experiments between the ISS and the ground. Polar is compatible with racks on the Station as well as Dragon and the
Cygnus spacecraft.

Samples can be stored at -80 degrees Celsius to keep critical samples from experiments at their proper temperature while being transported from
Endurance to scientists on shore. Crew-10s astronauts have conducted numerous experiments on orbit for the last few months.

Crew Dragon Endurance itself will be taken to Shannons home port of Long
Beach before it is transported to the factory in Hawthorne for refurbishment. Crew-10 is Endurances fourth flight, following Crew-3, Crew-5, and Crew-7. Endurance is likely to be used for ISS missions for the remainder of the Stations existence, which is currently set to end in the 2030-2031 timeframe.

(Lead image: Crew-10 arriving aboard Endurance in March 2025. Credit: NASA)



The post Crew-10 poised for return to Earth after months at ISS appeared
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Link to news story:
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2025/08/crew-10-return/


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