Crew-8 on the Way Home at Last

Crew-8 undocked from the International Space Station this afternoon, two months later than planned. Their mission was extended first while NASA was deciding what to do about Boeing’s Starliner crew and then by a long stretch of bad weather around Florida. The weather is finally good enough for them to splash down either in the Atlantic or the Gulf of Mexico early Friday morning after more than eight months in space.

NASA astronauts Matt Dominick, Mike Barratt and Jeanette Epps and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Grebenkin launched on March 3, 2024 for what was expected to be a six-month mission, returning in mid-August after Crew-9 arrived to replace them.

NASA delayed Crew-9’s launch and Crew-8’s return, however, while deciding what to do about the Boeing Starliner CFT crew, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. If they couldn’t come home on Starliner, they would need two of the four seats on Crew-9 and two of the original Crew-9 astronauts would have to stay home. That’s ultimately what NASA decided to do.

Crew-9 launched on September 28 and arrived the next day. After the usual week-long handover period, Crew-8 was getting ready to come home, but lousy weather in Florida has prevented it until today.

The four crew members boarded their Crew Dragon Endeavour, closed the hatch, and undocked at 5:05 pm ET.

LIVE: NASA’s @SpaceX #Crew8 mission is ready for the journey home. Watch as the @Space_Station crew closes the hatch of the Dragon spacecraft. https://t.co/hEMXNNLqlZ

— NASA (@NASA) October 23, 2024

It’s been an eventful mission. In addition to the usual routine of scientific experiments, maintenance activities, and two hours a day of exercise, Dominick and Barratt almost got to perform spacewalks, but both were cancelled at the last minute.

Dominick and NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson, who arrived and departed on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft and has been home for several weeks, were getting ready to do a spacewalk on June 13 when Dominick experienced “spacesuit discomfort.” NASA has not explained exactly what the problem was, but working outside the space station in the vacuum of space for six hours or more in any type of discomfort is undesirable.

A week later, Barratt and Dyson were in their spacesuits in the airlock about to exit when an umbilical connecting Dyson’s suit to the space station sprang a leak, spewing water over her suit and inside the airlock. Her helmet fogged up and ice crystals floated around her and Barratt. She later compared it to being in a “snow cone machine.”

Those spacewalks still have not taken place.

NASA’s focus shifted to the Boeing Starliner CFT mission and whether Starliner was safe enough to return Butch and Suni to Earth. After weeks of tests on the ground and on Starliner as it remained docked to the ISS, NASA decided to keep them on the ISS and bring Starliner home empty.

Once that decision was made, NASA could proceed with the launch of Crew-9 with only two of its original four crew members so Butch and Suni could use the other two seats to come home. They are now part of the reconfigured Crew-9 that includes NASA’s Nick Hague and Roscosmos’s Aleksander Gorbunov who launched on September 28. They’ll stay until February.

The ISS is partnership among the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada, and 11 European countries operating through the European Space Agency. It’s been permanently occupied by international crews rotating on roughly six-month schedules since November 2000.

Since SpaceX’s Crew Dragon began flying in 2020, the typical ISS crew complement is seven, three who come and go on Russia’s Soyuz and four on Crew Dragon. Each Soyuz usually includes a NASA astronaut and each Crew Dragon a Russian cosmonaut to ensure that one from each country is aboard to operate the interdependent Russian and U.S. segments of the orbiting facility.

With Butch and Suni there longer than expected, it’s been a larger crew than usual since June — as many as 12 at one point — but with Crew-8’s departure the ISS is finally back to seven: three Russians (Aleksey Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and Aleksandr Gorbunov) and four Americans (Suni Williams, Butch Wilmore, Nick Hague and Don Pettit).

Dragon departing the @Space_Station after undocking at 5:05 p.m. ET pic.twitter.com/9cENuy5HjV

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 23, 2024

SpaceX has eight places in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico where Endeavour can splash down on Friday morning. A final decision will be made based on weather conditions. Splashdown is scheduled for about 3:30 am ET.

SpaceX is moving the splash downs of Crew Dragon and Cargo Dragon back to the West Coast next year. The decision was not because of the unpredictable weather in Florida, but it will be a side benefit since conditions off the coast of California are not as affected by hurricanes, for example.