Four astronauts are heading home after nearly eight months aboard the International Space Station. At 8:05 a.m. EDT on October 7, NASA's SpaceX Crew-12 mission undocked from the station aboard the Dragon capsule "Freedom." After about 27.5 hours in orbit, the crew is scheduled to splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast at 11:34 a.m. EDT on Thursday, October 8.
The returning crew: NASA astronauts Jessica Meir (commander) and Jack Hathaway (pilot), ESA mission specialist Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos mission specialist Andrey Fedyaev. They arrived at the station on February 14, and their return wraps up a 237-day spaceflight.
NASA streamed the homecoming live: hatch closure began at 6 a.m. Wednesday, undocking at 8:05 a.m. On Thursday, coverage resumes at 10:20 a.m., with the deorbit burn at 10:46 a.m. and splashdown at 11:34 a.m.
During their stay, the quartet conducted hundreds of science experiments and station maintenance tasks. Meir and Adenot carried out four spacewalks together, working on equipment servicing and science hardware outside the station. Before departing, they spent their final days packing up: personal items, return cargo and scientific samples all went into Dragon "Freedom" — the very same capsule that had carried them to the outpost eight months earlier — and they ran checks on their SpaceX pressure suits.
The pre-return ritual of "fluid loading" is a science in itself. Before reentering Earth's atmosphere, every crewmember drinks fluid combined with salt tablets, a standard countermeasure that helps the body readjust to gravity after months of weightlessness. It is as much a part of the mission as the experiments they are bringing home.
On October 4, Meir handed over command of the station to Roscosmos cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov in the traditional change-of-command ceremony. The newcomers of Crew-13 — NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Josh Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov, who docked on October 1 — will stay until spring 2027, working on advanced space health and life-science research. Dubrov will remain aboard with flight engineers Anna Kikina and Anil Menon.
With Crew-12 gone, seven residents remain aboard the orbital outpost. NASA will hold a joint briefing at 1:15 p.m. Thursday on the Crew-12 return and the upcoming SpaceX Commercial Resupply Services-35 cargo launch.
The Crew-13 arrival and Crew-12 departure mark a smooth changing of the guard for Expedition 75. The previous crew rotation had been disrupted by a last-minute medical scare for NASA astronaut Mike Fincke — this time, everything went according to plan.