Following a six-month stay in space, four astronauts are readying to return home from the International Space Station (ISS). The members of SpaceX Crew-6 — NASA astronauts Woody Hoburg and Stephen Bowen, UAE (United Arab Emirates) Flight Engineer Sultan Alneyadi, and Roscosmos Flight Engineer Andrey Fedyaev — will be heading back to Earth on board a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft this weekend. It departs on Saturday, September 2.
The crew are scheduled to splash down late on Saturday night, and NASA will be live-streaming coverage of their undocking, return journey, and splashdown throughout the day. If you’d like to watch along at home, we’ve got all the details below.
The Crew-6 astronauts are set to return home
Crew-6 members have spent approximately six months on board the ISS, and with the recent arrival of Crew-7, they are now ready to depart. The newly arrived Crew-7 members — NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov — have been welcomed aboard and settled in to the station, so now it’s time for the busy station to become a little less crowded with the departure of Crew-6.
Some of the highlights of the Crew-6 mission include the longest stay in space by an Arab astronaut, Al Neyadi, and the installation of new solar arrays for the station by NASA astronauts Bowen and Hoburg.
How to watch the Crew-6 undocking and splashdown
NASA will be live-streaming the major milestones of Crew-6’s return to Earth. If you’re up early on Saturday, September 2, you’ll be able to catch the closing of the Dragon’s hatch, with video coverage beginning at 7 a.m. ET (4 a.m. PT) and the hatch closing scheduled for 7:20 a.m. ET (4:20 a.m. PT). Then there will be some time for final preparations before the flight, with the Dragon scheduled to undock from the station at 9:05 a.m. ET (6:05 a.m. PT).
The astronauts will then be traveling back from the ISS to Earth, which will take most of the day on Saturday. If you fancy checking in on their progress throughout the day, there will be audio-only coverage available via NASA’s YouTube channel.
Then video coverage will be back for the Dragon’s deorbit burn, entry, and splashdown, which you’ll be able to catch starting at 11:45 p.m. ET (8:45 p.m. PT). Splashdown itself is scheduled for a bit after midnight ET, so that’s 12:58 a.m. ET on Sunday, September 3, or 9:58 p.m. PT on Saturday, September 2.
To watch the coverage, you can either head to NASA TV’s YouTube page or use the video embedded near the top of this article.
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