Four members of the SpaceX Crew-10 mission climbed on the crew’s Dragon Endurance and set off the International Space Station on Friday evening for an overnight trip to Earth.
NASA astronauts Anne McLean and Nicole Ayers, Jaxa astronaut Takuya Onysia and Los Cosmos astronaut Kirill Peskov were launched into the station from the Kennedy Space Center, which arrived a day later on March 14th.
Four and a half months after boarding, they unlocked at 6:15pm and are approaching a 17 1/2 hour trip for a planned splashdown off the coast of California at 11:33am on Saturday.
“The crew are ready to go back to the atmosphere,” said Crew 10 Commander McClain, about an hour before landing.
“SpaceX Copy. We look forward to welcoming you to your home,” replied the SpaceX Mission Control crew operational resource engineer.
The dragon was prepared for leak checks and desypical burning along with astronauts on the spacecraft. The Deorbit Burn lasts for over 17 minutes, lined up to enter Earth’s atmosphere, then dumped trunks over the Pacific Ocean, exposing the spacecraft’s heat shield that can withstand temperatures close to 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit, slowing from over 16,000 mph to the final parachute 15 mph landing.
In the final landing sequence, two Drag parachutes are displayed that slow down to about 350 mph by the time the four main parachutes are finally deployed.
Unlocking disappeared on time as the space station population officially fell from 11 to 7.
“It was an absolute privilege to cross the road with you,” McClain said as the dragon left the station. “God Speed.”
“It was an honor for all of us all around the world to support you when you lived and worked at the International Space Station. We can’t wait to welcome Earth’s blue sky homes,” said Tescastwell of NASA Mission Control in Houston.
McLain led the farewell ceremony earlier in the week.
“As I complete my mission at the Space Station, I want to lead with gratitude for the absolute privilege of working on this incredible International Space Station,” she said. “We are all enthusiastically aware that we may never be able to do this again, and we are very pensive in the last few days of realising what we have become.”
Ayres was the first person known as a fly from the NASA astronaut class selected in 2021.
“We got to see some amazing views, and we had a really big belly laugh and a great time together,” she said of the crew of the crew of 10. “I’m thrilled to leave with a heart full of gratitude and see where the International Space Station will go after we get home.”
McClain is the commander of the crew 10, while Onishi was the commander of the station’s Expedition 73. He handed over the command to Roscosmos astronaut Sergei Rizhikov at a pre-departure ceremony at a ceremony on Tuesday. Ryzhikov is part of the Soyuz crew that flew out in April and will not leave until December. After the crew leaves, its population returns from 11 to 7.
“I wish we could spend more time together,” Onishi said of the alternative to crew 11 that arrived last weekend. “But you’re in good hands. So I’m sure the second half of Expedition 73 will get even better. … Crew-10 is leaving now, but science continues here.
The California splashdown shows that the NASA mission with SpaceX landed on the West Coast for the first time, and that the SpaceX Crew Dragon splashed off Florida’s coast instead, making it 10 landings on the West Coast with NASA (crew 1 through crew 9 via Demo-2 and Crew-1).
However, SpaceX has undergone a coastal change after several incidents of wreckage appeared on land around the world, and it turns out to be the remains of the crew’s dragon trunk. Currently, trunks are being discarded more safely over the Pacific Ocean as they come for landing. SpaceX has already knocked out two California landings this year with its private missions FRAM2 and Axiom Space AX-4.
McLain thanked his family for their support four and a half months later.
“We’ll see you right away on the largest planet in the solar system. We checked,” she said. “We’ll soon be back to Earth.”
For crews for approximately 148 days in space, this is the shortest mark ever for operational flights based on NASA’s commercial crew program. The longest was Crew 8, which had over 235 days from March to October 2024. Most were about six months long.
The reason Crew-10 is short is twice as long. Originally targeted for the February liftoff, but the crew flew on endurance as delays from SpaceX forced the shuffle in the fifth and final crew dragons, causing the crew to fly on endurance and the private AX-4 mission ended with a new vehicle.
It will also need to leave before the planned CRS-33 cargo dragon mission is scheduled to arrive later this month and arrive somewhere to park. Its cargo dragon incorporates a special re-boost capacity used to increase the altitude of SpaceX’s first space station. While Russian progressive spacecraft are usually responsible for reboost space stations, NASA is trying to store fuel reserves to return to the space station when it is decommissioned after 2030 and burn out in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Endurance has completed its fourth mission into space that debuted with Crew 3 in 2021 and flew with Crew 5 in 2022 and Crew 7 in 2023. The other crew dragons are resilient and free.
NASA and SpaceX are considering potential growth up to eight months, but Crew-11 is not planning to attend school until next year.
Crew-10 arrived in March, part of the Starliner saga, as it was the station rescue crew that was finally able to return home in space for nearly nine months.
Starliner flew to the station in June 2024 for flight tests with its crew, but the spacecraft suffered from helium leakage and thruster failures in its pre-docking propulsion system. NASA ultimately chose to send Starliner home without crew in September. That means NASA astronauts Butch Willmore and Suni Williams had to board the station until SpaceX could fly their crew dragons in a pair of open seats that allowed them to fly to the house.
Crew 9 arrived at the station in the fall of 2024, but Williams and Wilmore had to stay at the station until Crew 10 arrived and the crew could return home.
The Commercial Crew Program originally contracted with Boeing and SpaceX, taking over the responsibility for shutting down astronauts at a US-based launch between the space station and the space station, respectively, to build the spacecraft. NASA has had to resort to Russia for rides to Soyuz Flight stations since the end of the Space Shuttle Program in 2011.
Both SpaceX and Boeing faced problems with getting their test flights up and running, but SpaceX ultimately returned a US-based orbital flight nearly nine years later.
Since Demo-2, SpaceX has fleets of five crew dragons with 74 human passengers flying 19 times. Boeing was having problems with its first weat-unshamed Starliner flight in 2019, which forced a follow-up with its own problem of not flying until 2022.
However, Boeing and NASA may return to fixing issues found on the CFT mission and, on the next flight, they may return to a mission that has not complained to the station to ensure that the propulsion system is safe. NASA was then able to fly operational missions on Starliner.
However, SpaceX could potentially fly its crew 12 for its next revolving mission early next year.
NASA needs adequate flights from both companies to support staffing stations until it is removed. At most, it probably only makes sense for 10 missions, but if you stay inside the ship it can get less if you stretch.
The Trump administration recently pushed it to not only limit the number of astronauts, but also to pull back the number of flights needed to the station before it’s repealed.
All this is within the scope of a larger plan to invest more in NASA’s efforts to return to the Moon and Mars, whilst relying on future commercial space stations of companies such as Axiom Space, Blue Origin, and Vast.
Original issue: August 8, 2025, 11:55am EDT
