After spending nearly ten months aboard the International Space Station, the four members of SpaceX’s Crew-12 mission have officially begun their descent toward Earth. The Crew Dragon capsule, aptly named Freedom, undocked from the orbital laboratory on Wednesday morning. Provided everything proceeds according to schedule, the crew will make a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California on Thursday afternoon following a precise deorbit burn.
The international group consists of NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency, and Andrey Fedyaev representing Roscosmos. While some members were seasoned veterans of space travel, others celebrated major milestones during their stay. Most notably, Sophie Adenot became the first French woman to perform a spacewalk, eventually completing three outings in the vacuum of space. Jessica Meir also extended her impressive record by conducting four additional spacewalks during this tour.
Their tenure on the station lasted longer than originally planned due to technical delays with their replacements. The incoming Crew-13 team faced propulsion issues with their own capsule, Grace, which inadvertently gifted the Crew-12 team several extra weeks of orbiting the planet. This extension followed a period of unusual staffing levels on the station earlier in the year when a previous crew returned early for medical reasons, marking the first such evacuation in the history of the facility.
As they prepare to transition back to gravity, the astronauts expressed a mixture of excitement and nostalgia. During a recent conversation with reporters, Jessica Meir shared her longing for simple earthly pleasures like feeling a breeze on her face and hearing wind in the trees, though she admitted she would deeply miss weightlessness and the panoramic views of our world from above. Following their recovery from splashdown, NASA and SpaceX intend to host a press conference to celebrate their safe return and look ahead to upcoming cargo missions.