Four astronauts aboard the International Space Station strapped into their Crew Dragon capsule and undocked early Wednesday, beginning their journey home after completing a 237-day stay in orbit. Crew 12 commander Jessica Meir and pilot Jack Hathaway, alongside European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot and cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, backed away from the orbital laboratory at 8:05 a.m. Eastern Time. Cruising 260 miles above Cuba and the Bahamas, the Freedom capsule executed an automated loop before slowly dropping away from the station. As the spacecraft departed, Meir expressed gratitude to the global teams supporting the mission. Following a final day in weightlessness, Meir and Hathaway are scheduled to monitor a nine-minute and 20-second thruster firing Thursday morning, setting up a splashdown off the Southern California coast at 11:34 a.m. ET. Left behind on the station are the newly arrived Crew 13 members—commander Jessica Watkins, pilot Luke Delaney, Canadian astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov—who arrived on October 1 for a six-month tour of duty. Also remaining aboard are Soyuz MS-29 commander Pyotr Dubrov, cosmonaut Anna Kikina, and NASA astronaut Anil Menon, who launched on July 14 and plan an eight-month stay. During a handover ceremony Sunday, Meir transferred station command to Dubrov, describing the departure as a bittersweet moment of leaving orbital friends to reunite with loved ones on Earth. Dubrov noted the significance of the transition, which coincided with the anniversary of the launch of the first Sputnik. The combined crews concluded the handover with a group embrace before the departing astronauts began their trip home. Upon splashdown, the Crew 12 team will conclude a mission spanning 237 days and five hours, having orbited the planet 3,792 times and logged nearly 101 million miles.
Source: cbsnews.com
