SpaceX Crew Dragon Brings Four Astronauts Home After 237 Days in Orbit

SpaceX closed out another long-duration crew rotation on Thursday when its Crew Dragon Freedom splashed down in the Pacific Ocean roughly 50 miles west of Los Angeles. The capsule carried four astronauts home after 237 days aboard the International Space Station, touching down at 11:34 a.m. ET and bringing the Crew-12 mission to a clean finish.

The returning crew consisted of NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. They departed the station’s Harmony module early Wednesday before beginning the roughly day-long journey back to Earth. The deorbit burn lasted about nine minutes, after which Freedom re-entered the atmosphere at nearly five miles per second. Drogue chutes deployed near 18,000 feet, followed by four main parachutes that slowed the capsule to about 15 mph before it hit the water.

Recovery crews in fast boats secured the capsule before the ship Shannon lifted it aboard with the astronauts still inside, where flight surgeons performed initial medical checks. All four will be flown ashore by helicopter and then travel to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston for rehabilitation.

Crew-12 lifted off from Cape Canaveral in February, a launch that also marked the first Falcon 9 booster landing at SpaceX’s new LZ-40 pad. During their stay, the astronauts completed 3,792 orbits, traveled close to 101 million miles and conducted four spacewalks to maintain and upgrade the station.

The mission added milestones for its members. Meir’s cumulative time in space now stands at 440 days, placing her among NASA’s top 10. The flight was the first for both Hathaway and Adenot, a French Air Force colonel and former helicopter pilot, while Fedyaev logged his second long-duration Dragon mission after flying on Crew-6 in 2023. The splashdown also clears the Harmony port for an upcoming cargo Dragon carrying the final pair of ISS Roll-Out Solar Arrays, following the October 1 arrival of Crew-13 aboard Crew Dragon Grace.