Crew-10 Splashes Down Off San Diego

NASA’s Crew-10 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean this morning after five months on the International Space Station. Two private astronaut crews, Fram2 and Axiom-4, made West Coast splashdowns earlier this year, but this is the first NASA crew to land there.

Crew Dragon Endurance landed off the coast of San Diego at 11:33 am EDT.  SpaceX moved splashdowns from Florida to California to ensure that any surviving pieces of Dragon’s trunk, which separates during reentry, end up in the ocean and not on land.  That happened several times as catalogued by Jonathan McDowell of Jonathan’s Space Report.

Commander Anne McClain (NASA), pilot Nichole Ayers (NASA), and mission specialists Takuya Onishi (JAXA) and Kirill Peskov (Roscosmos) were all smiles when the hatch opened after they were safely aboard SpaceX’s recovery ship.

#Crew10 Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov, left, @NASA_Astronauts Nichole Ayers and Anne McClain, and JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi, right, are seen inside their @SpaceX Dragon spacecraft after splashing down off the coast of California. More photos: https://t.co/D2LbSnodfL pic.twitter.com/OlrJimFwfG

— NASA HQ PHOTO (@nasahqphoto) August 9, 2025

Crew-10’s launch earlier this year was delayed a few weeks because the new SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft they were supposed to use wasn’t ready in time. NASA and SpaceX finally decided to swap capsules and use Endurance instead. The new capsule, now named Grace, was used for the Axiom-4 private astronaut mission in June.

Crew-11 arrived at the International Space Station last week and Crew-10 undocked yesterday at 6:15 pm ET. The ISS is now back to its standard crew complement of seven: three Russians and four from NASA and other international partners.

At least one Russian and one American must be aboard at all times to operate the interdependent Russian and American segments. To that end, Russian Soyuz missions include an American astronaut and NASA missions include a Russian cosmonaut, what are called “seat swaps.”

During a post-splashdown press conference today, NASA ISS Deputy Program Manager Dina Contella said NASA and Roscosmos have seat swap agreements in place covering through one flight in 2027 and a new agreement was drafted while Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Bakanov was here. Asked if any other ISS-related agreements were reached during his visit, Contella said only that “we did have a good exchange between the two agencies and our cooperation continuing on ISS.”

Bakanov was invited to attend the Crew-11 launch and met with Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy at Kennedy Space Center, the first face-to-face meeting between the heads of the two agencies in eight years. NASA has said little about Bakanov’s visit, but Russia’s news agency TASS reported on it.

The next NASA launch to the ISS will be SpaceX’s 33rd cargo mission, SpX-33, later this month that features an enhanced reboost capability.

The ISS’s orbit must be reboosted periodically to compensate for atmospheric drag, a task performed by engines on Russia’s Zvezda module and Progress cargo spacecraft. Recently, however, NASA has been experimenting with using Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus cargo spacecraft and SpaceX’s Cargo Dragon for reboost although their capabilities are comparatively limited.

SpX-33 will increase Dragon’s reboost capabilities with a special module in the “trunk,” the unpressurized section of Dragon. Contella said the SpX-33 Dragon’s reboost capability is about three times more than Cygnus can provide.  SpaceX Director of Dragon Mission Management Sarah Walker said SpX-33 will make four or five burns, imparting a change in velocity (“delta V”) of 9 meters per second.

The additional reboost capability is particularly useful now because of the intensity of the solar cycle, which increases drag. Overall, however, the goal is use U.S. spacecraft for reboost when possible so Russia can store propellant to use as the ISS is deorbited at the end of this decade. NASA ISS Program Manager Dana Weigel said on August 1 that the Russian segment will be used for attitude control during the two-year process as the orbit gradually lowers through natural decay. The U.S. Deorbit Vehicle being built by SpaceX then will do the thrusting needed to direct the ISS into an unoccupied area of the Pacific Ocean in 2030.