Update, November 7: The return mission has been slightly delayed due to high winds in the splashdown zone. Undocking will now occur at 2:05 p.m. ET on Monday, November 8, with splashdown scheduled for 10:33 p.m. ET on Monday.
Tomorrow, Monday, November 8, four astronauts will be returning home from the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, during a busy period of coming and going at the station. They’ll be traveling through the afternoon and should splash down off the coast of Florida on Monday night. NASA will be livestreaming the astronauts’ voyage and we’ve got the details on how you can watch along at home.
The four crew members are NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Aki Hoshide, and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Thomas Pesquet, who will have spent 199 days in space for this mission. They’ve been living on the ISS since April this year as part of the Crew-2 mission, named as it is the second operational mission of SpaceX’s astronaut capsule, the Crew Dragon.
They’ll be heading home in the Crew Dragon named Endeavour, which is set to undock from the station on Monday at 2:05 p.m. ET (11:05 a.m. PT), containing the four crew members plus 530 pounds of hardware and scientific research. After a final fly around the station, Endeavour will head toward Earth to land in either the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida at 10:33 p.m. ET (7:33 p.m. PT) on Monday.
The undocking and the journey through to the splashdown will be livestreamed on NASA TV, which you can watch either by using the video embedded at the top of this page or by heading to NASA’s website. Coverage on Monday begins at 11:45 a.m. ET (8:45 a.m. PT), with the closure of the hatch between the Crew Dragon and the ISS scheduled for 12:40 p.m. ET (9:40 a.m. PT).
