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Four astronauts are scheduled to return home from the International Space Station this week, ending a nearly six-month mission in space, but bad weather at the crew splash site is forcing a delay.
The astronauts – Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines and Jessica Watkins of NASA, as well as Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency – were scheduled to leave the space station aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule Thursday morning . But NASA was forced to suspend the departure due to unfavorable weather conditions on Earth.
NASA and SpaceX are aiming for a Crew Dragon liftoff at 11:35 a.m. ET on Friday, and splashdown off the coast of Florida could happen a few hours later at 4:50 p.m. ET, according to a NASA press release.
Weather that forces delays in the launch or return of ISS spacecraft is extremely common, especially when unpredictable storms batter the dispersal sites off the coast of Florida.
“Mission teams continue to monitor a cold front moving through Florida on Thursday, October 13, bringing strong winds and rainy weather near splash zones on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts,” according to the NASA. “Current weather forecasts show increased forecast certainty on Friday due to a high pressure system behind the cold front, which is expected to bring more favorable conditions for splashing and recovery.”
Ground crews are expected to review the weather again overnight.
The Crew Dragon spacecraft that will bring the astronauts home normally has seven potential landing zones: near the coast of Pensacola, Tampa, Tallahassee, Panama City, Cape Canaveral, Daytona and Jacksonville.
It’s still unclear which dispersal site NASA and SpaceX are targeting on Friday.
This mission, called Crew-4, marked a historic first on the ISS, as Jessica Watkins became the first black woman to join the crew of the space station for an extended stay.
More than a dozen black Americans, including five black women, have traveled in space since Guion Bluford became the first to do so in 1983. The ISS has housed more than 250 astronauts since year 2000, but no black woman has had the opportunity to live before. and work in space for an extended period until now.
Aerospace company SpaceX developed the Crew Dragon spacecraft under a $2.6 billion contract with NASA as part of the Commercial Crew program.
The idea behind the program was to move NASA into a customer role, allowing private companies to design, build and test a new spacecraft to serve NASA astronauts while giving the company ownership of the vehicle.
For nearly a decade after NASA’s space shuttle program retired in 2011, the United States had to rely on buying seats on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft to get its astronauts there from the ISS. SpaceX renewed human orbital spaceflight capabilities from US soil in 2020 with the launch of its Demo-2 mission, which carried two NASA astronauts to the space station.
Crew-4 is SpaceX’s fifth flight as part of its partnership with NASA, and the space agency has continued to purchase additional flights from the company led by founder and CEO Elon Musk.
The return of Crew-4 astronauts to Earth comes less than a week after Crew-5 astronauts arrived in a separate SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. The two mission teams have spent the last few days in a short handover period to ensure a smooth transition between the crews.
NASA officials have continued to expand the agency’s partnership with SpaceX, increasing the value of its global agreement to encompass 15 total manned missions worth more than $4.9 billion.
However, since SpaceX developed the Crew Dragon under a fixed-price commercial contract, it retains ownership of the vehicle. This means that the private company also has the ability to sell seats to whoever it wants. SpaceX has already flown two Crew Dragon missions funded entirely by wealthy thrill seekers. And there are future private missions in the works.