Updated 8:40 a.m. Eastern about additional medical evaluations.
WASHINGTON — A Crew Dragon spacecraft successfully returned to Earth from the International Space Station early Oct. 25, wrapping up a record-setting mission.
The Crew Dragon spacecraft Endeavour splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast from Pensacola, Florida, at 3:29 a.m. Eastern. The spacecraft had undocked from the ISS at 5:05 p.m. Eastern Oct. 23.
The splashdown marked the end of the Crew-8 mission, returning NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin. The four spent 235 days in space, 232 of them on the station.
In a statement several hours after splashdown, NASA said the four had been taken to a local medical facility “for additional evaluation” separate from the standard medical evaluations done on the recovery ship. NASA did not elaborate on what prompted that evaluation, and the agency said at a post-splashdown briefing that the the crew was doing well after splashdown. NASA added in its statement that “out of an abundance of caution, all crew members were flown to the facility together.”
That 235-day mission is a record for the longest flight of an American crewed spacecraft. Crew-8 set that record first because a delay of more than a month in the launch of Crew-9, which gave NASA time to evaluate what to do with Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft that flew to the station on a crewed test flight. NASA decided to bring Starliner back without a crew and launch just two people on Crew-9 to free up seats for Starliner astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams.
Crew-9 launched Sept. 28 and arrived at the station a day later. NASA planned what Richard Jones, deputy manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, called an “extended handover” between Crew-8 and Crew-9 to give astronauts time to remove temporary seating arrangements for Wilmore and Williams in Endeavour had there been a…
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