The undocking of the Crew Dragon spacecraft with American astronauts and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov from the International Space Station (ISS) is scheduled for March 18, NASA reported.
The Crew-9 mission crew, which includes NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams, and Butch Wilmore, as well as Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov, is completing a long scientific expedition. They will return urgent research results to Earth.
On Sunday, NASA and SpaceX held a meeting to assess weather conditions for splashdown off the coast of Florida. According to the agency, current forecasts allow for the return of Crew-9 on Tuesday, March 18. Undocking from the ISS is scheduled for 01:05 AM EDT (09:05 Moscow time), and splashdown is expected at 5:57 PM EDT (01:57 AM Moscow time on Wednesday).
Earlier, the new Crew-10 crew docked to the ISS, which included Russian cosmonaut Kirill Peskov. It was their arrival that made it possible for the astronauts of the Crew-9 mission, who had been on the station since the end of September, to return. Their mission was delayed due to problems with the Starliner spacecraft, which was supposed to pick up part of the crew but returned to Earth without people due to technical problems.
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