Crew-10 poised for return to Earth after months at ISS

Crew Dragon C210 Endurance and the Crew-10 astronauts are preparing to return to Earth following over 140 days in orbit aboard the International Space Station. The mission, commanded by NASA astronaut Anne McClain, is scheduled to undock from the Station on Thursday, Aug. 7, at 16:05 UTC before splashing down off the west coast of the United States the next day.

Crew-10, composed of astronauts from NASA, Japan, and Russia, will hand over its duties to the recently launched Crew-11 astronauts. Crew-11’s Zena Cardman, Michael Fincke, Kimiya Yui, and Oleg Platonov are taking over in place of McClain, Nichole Ayers, Japan’s Takuya Onishi, and Russia’s Kirill Peskov.

Japan, a key member of the International Space Station (ISS) partnership from the beginning of the program, now will have a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut aboard the Station for two straight Expedition increments, totaling roughly one year. The Japanese human presence on ISS will end, at least for the moment, when JAXA’s Yui leaves the Station after a handover to Crew-12.

The Expedition 73 crew, including Crew-10 and Crew-11, pose before Crew-11’s departure. (Credit: NASA/Nichole Ayers)

Roscosmos’ Platonov is taking over for Crew-10’s Peskov and will be replaced by Oleg Artemyev of Crew-12. Russia and the United States are continuing an agreement to launch their agencies’ astronauts on each other’s crew vehicles to ensure redundancy and a continued presence on ISS if either the Soyuz or Crew Dragon were grounded due to a mishap.

After Crew-10’s undocking, Endurance will spend several hours in orbit before deorbiting and splashing down in the Pacific. The current splashdown time on Friday, Aug. 8, is 8:58 AM PDT (15:58 UTC), and Crew-10 will be the first NASA ISS crewed mission to splash down in the Pacific Ocean off California.

Crew-10’s splashdown off of California follows the return of the Fram2 and Axiom-4 missions which were the first to use the west coast. SpaceX changed Crew Dragon’s return area to the west coast due to Dragon’s trunk being jettisoned after the deorbit burn.

This revised jettison procedure, decided upon after large pieces from Dragon trunks unexpectedly survived reentry, would risk the trunk reentering over land on a Florida-bound trajectory. Weather also tends to be better for landings off of southern California than off Florida’s coasts; a number of Florida returns have been delayed for days on end due to rough weather and sea state conditions.

SpaceX will have the recovery ship Shannon on site to retrieve Endurance and its crew. Endurance’s exact splashdown site will be off of either Oceanside, San Diego, or Long Beach, depending on exact conditions at the time of landing.

While Shannon is still on duty, the recovery ship Megan has been retired since SpaceX does not need two active ships like it did when landings were conducted on both sides of the Florida peninsula.

Recovery ship Shannon conducting its first Crew Dragon recovery in the Pacific for the Fram2 mission. (Credit: SpaceX)

After splashdown, a recovery crew will converge on the floating Crew Dragon and check for any hydrazine leaks from the spacecraft’s thrusters. Once the spacecraft is given the all clear, Shannon will draw closer to the bobbing spacecraft and use its retrieval gear to bring Endurance onto its recovery deck.

Crew members aboard Shannon, including a medical team, will help the astronauts exit the capsule before wheeling them to a medical area on the ship. After the astronauts are medically checked and assuming everything is well, they will be flown off of the ship by helicopter to shore before flying back to Houston.

One mission, Crew-8, saw the astronauts taken to a hospital in Pensacola, Florida, after these checks out of an “abundance of caution,” but typically returning crews are flown back to Houston after they leave the ship. Three of the astronauts returned to Houston after being discharged while one was hospitalized for a time before leaving.

An illustration of the Polar cold stowage facility. (Credit: University of Alabama-Birmingham Center for Biophysical Sciences and Engineering)

Besides the Crew-10 astronauts, Endurance will also take home critical science samples aboard the Polar portable cold storage facility used to transport temperature-sensitive experiments between the ISS and the ground. Polar is compatible with racks on the Station as well as Dragon and the Cygnus spacecraft.

Samples can be stored at -80 degrees Celsius to keep critical samples from experiments at their proper temperature while being transported from Endurance to scientists on shore. Crew-10’s astronauts have conducted numerous experiments on orbit for the last few months.

Crew Dragon Endurance itself will be taken to Shannon’s home port of Long Beach before it is transported to the factory in Hawthorne for refurbishment. Crew-10 is Endurance’s fourth flight, following Crew-3, Crew-5, and Crew-7. Endurance is likely to be used for ISS missions for the remainder of the Station’s existence, which is currently set to end in the 2030-2031 timeframe.

(Lead image: Crew-10 arriving aboard Endurance in March 2025. Credit: NASA)

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