The forthcoming return activities for NASA's SpaceX Crew-4 mission to the International Space Station (ISS) will be streamed live by the space agency, starting on Wednesday, Oct. 12.
The Crew-4 voyage, which included NASA astronauts Bob Hines, Kjell Lindgren, and Jessica Watkins as well as ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, is scheduled to land back on Earth at 5:41 p.m. EDT on Thursday, October 13.
NASA announced in a press release that the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft is set to undock from the space station at 7:05 p.m. on Wednesday to start its trip back home.
However, teams are still monitoring the weather as they follow the path of a cold front that is expected to move over the splashdown regions off Florida's Gulf and Atlantic coasts.
Six hours before undocking, mission teams will do another weather check while continuing to monitor splashdown and recovery circumstances. If initial plans are not followed, undocking opportunities will still be available on Thursday.
On NASA Television, the NASA app, and the organization's website, the parting words for Crew-4, the change of command, the hatch closure, the undocking, and the splashdown will all be shown live. An audio-only post-splashdown news conference will also be held by the space agency.
The Crew-4 astronauts will say their final goodbyes on October 12 and station commander Samantha Cristoforetti will turn over control of the space station to Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev.
The Dragon capsule, which the crew has given the name Freedom, will automatically disengage from the space station on Thursday and land in one of seven predetermined locations in the Atlantic or Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida.
Additionally, Freedom will bring back to Earth critical and essential research, according to NASA.
Complete Timeline of Crew-4's Return to Earth
Wednesday, Oct. 12
• 10:05 a.m. - The space station's change of command ceremony and parting statements for Crew 4.
• 5 p.m. - Coverage of the hatch closure starts at 5:20 p.m.
• 6:45 p.m. - Coverage of undocking will start at 7:05 p.m. undocking with a splashdown on Thursday.
Thursday, Oct. 13
• 5:41 p.m. - Splashdown off the Florida coast
• 7 p.m. - A media teleconference from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston will be held by this time.
Goodbye Crew-4, Hello Crew-5
On October 5, a Dragon spacecraft atop a Falcon 9 rocket launched the Crew-5 astronaut mission from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA's Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, Japan's Koichi Wakata, and cosmonaut Anna Kikina were included in the astronaut mission. They will all be spending five months on the ISS.
Crew-5 was historic in numerous ways. For instance, Mann made history as the first Native American woman to travel to space, while Kikina was the first Russian to fly with SpaceX.
When the astronauts from Crew-5 arrived, there were already seven crew members aboard the ISS, including four from SpaceX's Crew-4 mission.
But that number will now be reduced as Crew-4 gears to return to Earth.
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Written by Joaquin Victor Tacla
