Four Expedition 75 crew members are in their final full day aboard the International Space Station as they prepare to undock aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and return to Earth. Their departure will leave seven residents aboard the orbital outpost to continue advanced space research and lab maintenance.
NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway will respectively command and pilot Dragon when it undocks from the Harmony module’s space-facing port at 8:05 a.m. EDT on Wednesday. Mission specialists Sophie Adenot of ESA (European Space Agency) and Andrey Fedyaev of Roscosmos will ride back to Earth with the NASA duo for a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific Ocean at 11:34 a.m. on Thursday where NASA and SpaceX support personnel will retrieve Dragon and greet the crew. Their return to Earth will represent the completion of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 mission after 237 days in space.
The homebound quartet has finalized packing Dragon with personal items, cargo, and scientific samples that began a couple of weeks ago. The returning crew also prepared drink bags combined with salt tablets that they will consume before reentering Earth’s atmosphere. Fluid loading is a part of every crew’s return to Earth and helps the body adjust to gravity after a long duration spaceflight.
NASA+ will begin its live coverage of Crew-12’s return at 6 a.m. as the foursome enters Dragon and closes its hatch at around 6:20 a.m. NASA+ will resume undocking coverage at 7:45 a.m. Finally, splashdown coverage begins at 10:20 a.m. on Thursday.
The station’s four newest crewmates, who arrived at the station on Oct. 1 as NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 members, have begun their research duties to advance health on and off the Earth. They will live and work aboard the orbital outpost until spring 2027.
NASA flight engineer Jessica Watkins collected, processed, and analyzed her blood samples to study the risk of space-caused blood clots on Tuesday. NASA flight engineer Luke Delaney logged his sleep patterns, collected a saliva sample, then configured a smart watch to measure his health data for the RelaxPro investigation. Flight engineer Josh Kutryk of CSA (Canadian Space Agency) had his veins scanned by Adenot who operated the Ultrasound 3 device. Finally, Roscosmos flight engineer Sergey Teteryatnikov wore an acoustic sensor around his neck and recorded his breathing rate for a respiratory study.
NASA flight engineer Anil Menon and station commander Pyotr Dubrov and flight engineer Anna Kikina, both Roscosmos cosmonauts, began their mission on July 14 and will also stay in space until spring. Menon wore a sensor-packed vest and headband that measured his heart and breathing rate as he pedaled on the Destiny laboratory module’s exercise cycle. Dubrov and Kikina set up hardware to test a special body-worn control device to simulate manipulating robots for the Teledroid investigation.
Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station on X, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.
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