SpaceX’s Crew-4 mission is headed home.
Crew-4’s Dragon capsule, named Freedom, undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday (Oct. 14) at 12:05 p.m. EDT (1605 GMT), ending a 5.5-month orbital stay and overcoming two weather-related undocking delays Wednesday (Oct. 12) and Thursday (Oct. 13). Undocking was also delayed by 30 minutes on Friday to verify alignment of the hatches between the two spacecraft.Â
“We wish you godspeed and safe re-entry,” a member of Expedition 68 told the departing crew in the moments after undocking.
Freedom is now on its way back to Earth, and it should get here soon: Splashdown off the coast of Florida is expected at around 4:55 p.m. EDT (2055 GMT) on Friday, NASA officials said. Splashdown will take place near Jacksonville, Florida, with Tallahassee as a potential backup location on Saturday (Oct. 15), NASA officials said.
You can watch that milestone live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly via the space agency (opens in new tab). NASA and SpaceX also have said they plan to hold a post-splashdown call with reporters, which you can tune into as well. The timing for that call has not yet been released.
Related: Amazing photos of SpaceX’s Crew-4 mission
As its name suggests, Crew-4 is the fourth contracted astronaut mission that SpaceX has flown to the ISS for NASA. The crewmembers are NASA astronauts Bob Hines, Kjell Lindgren and Jessica Watkins and the European Space Agency’s Samantha Cristoforetti.
The quartet launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on April 27 and arrived at the orbiting lab that same day. The astronauts conducted more than 200 scientific experiments during their time off Earth, NASA officials have said.
Cristoforetti made history during the mission, becoming the first European woman ever to command the ISS. She handed the reins of the station over to Russian cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev during a change-of-command ceremony on Tuesday (Oct. 11).
Though Crew-4 is gone, the orbiting lab still hosts a SpaceX mission: the four-person Crew-5 arrived on Oct. 6 for a roughly five-month stay.Â
Like SpaceX, Boeing holds a contract with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. Boeing is gearing up for its first astronaut mission to the ISS, a crewed test flight that could launch as early as February 2023.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out There (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or on Facebook (opens in new tab). Â
