A SpaceX Dragon spacecraft carrying 4 astronauts will head back to Earth no sooner than Sunday morning (Sept. 3) after a one-day weather delay to wrap up NASA’s Crew-6 mission, and you may watch the motion live online totally free.
The hatches between the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, named Endeavour, and the International Space Station (ISS) are currently scheduled to shut on Sunday around 5 a.m. EDT (0900 GMT). Endeavour will undock from the orbiting lab shortly thereafter, around 7:05 a.m. EDT (1105 GMT).
You may watch these Crew-6 mission milestones live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA. Hatch-closing coverage will start at 5 a.m. EDT (0900 GMT). There shall be a brief break after that, and undocking coverage will begin at 6:45 a.m. EDT (1045 GMT).
NASA and SpaceX initially aimed to return the Crew-6 astronauts to on Saturday, but announced a 24-hour delay on Friday morning (Sept. 1). After a weather briefing early Saturday, mission managers decided to press ahead with undocking and splashdown, but provided that weather conditions are favorable.
“NASA and SpaceX are proceeding toward undocking at 7:05am ET Sept.3, with a splashdown just after midnight at 12:15am ET Sept.4, off Florida’s coast,” NASA wrote in an update on X (formerly referred to as Twitter). “Weather conditions for splashdown are improving and shall be evaluated ahead of the crew undocking.”
Endeavour will then head back to Earth, ultimately splashing down off the coast of Florida no sooner than 12:15 a.m. EDT (0415 GMT) on Monday (Sept. 4). You may watch that homecoming live here at Space.com as well; coverage will begin Sunday at 11 p.m. EDT (0300 GMT on Monday).
The Crew-6 quartet — NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren “Woody” Hoburg, the United Arab Emirates’ Sultan Al Neyadi and Andrey Fedyaev of Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos — has spent almost exactly six months in orbit; Endeavour docked with the ISS on March 3.
Crew-6 is leaving just a number of days after the arrival of one other SpaceX mission: The four-person Crew-7 reached the ISS on Aug. 27.
Crew-7 is an excellent more international affair than Crew-6. The brand new mission features 4 astronauts from 4 different space agencies: Jasmin Moghbeli of NASA, Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency, Konstantin Borisov of Roscosmos and Satoshi Furukawa of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.