By The Epoch Times | Created at 2026-10-08 21:03:53 | Updated at 2026-10-08 21:44:58
47 minutes ago
Another manned space mission has safely come to an end.
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12—NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev—splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off Los Angeles just after 11:30 a.m. ET on Oct. 8.
The four explorers spent 237 days in space, 235 of which were on the International Space Station, to take part in the 74th and 75th live-aboard “Expedition” missions dedicated to advancing scientific discoveries to better life on Earth and in space, as well as maintain the orbital outpost and continue a 25-year streak of continuous human presence beyond Earth.
“They say when one door closes, another one opens. In this case, we are closing two doors and opening many more,” NASA astronaut Anil Menon said in a farewell message on X as he remained at the station.
“I can’t wait to see what the future holds for Crew-12 reuniting with their families. The entire @Space_Station crew wishes them a safe journey. Godspeed.”
Their SpaceX Crew Dragon Freedom left the space station just after 8 a.m. on Oct. 7. After about a day of conducting a series of maneuvers to take it out of orbit, the crew made a fiery reentry through the atmosphere. The craft then deployed a series of parachutes to slow down from an orbital speed of five miles per second to a safe, gentle drop into the ocean.
This was Dragon Freedom’s fifth mission, with SpaceX Crew Dragons currently certified to fly up to 15 flights.
Once the capsule was onboard SpaceX’s recovery ship, Meir was the first to emerge. She comes home having served both as the Crew-12 commander and commander of the entire International Space Station. She has now logged 442 days in space, which puts her 10th among all NASA astronauts for most time spent in space. Her four space walks during this mission give her a career total of seven, which puts her third among NASA’s female astronauts—just behind Suni Williams’s nine space walks and Peggy Whitson’s 10.
From their capsule, the astronauts went straight to the medical bay to be checked out. Once cleared, they will board a helicopter that takes them to land. Then a plane will take them back to Houston.
This mission was Meir and Fedyaev’s second to space, and the first time up for Adenot and Hathaway.
They were relieved by NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13, which launched on the morning of Oct. 1 and arrived at the space station later that day, faster than any other SpaceX Dragon before it.
Crew-13’s mission kicks off with some traffic as they oversee the Oct. 9 departure and disposal of the Northrop Grumman cargo spacecraft that delivered more than 11,000 pounds of supplies to the space station in April. Then, on Oct. 13, NASA will launch the next SpaceX Cargo Dragon mission, which will deliver a vast array of experiments, food, replacement parts for the station’s robotic arm, new solar arrays, and a new spacesuit.
Jessica Watkins, Crew-13 commander, shared a picture on social media of her mission’s zero-g indicator—a stuffed gold dragon they named “Lucky”—saying, “A little luck and a lot of Grace go a long way (in this case, 250 miles up)!”
“Thinking of Crew-12 today, whose indicator is beginning to drop right about now as they re-enter Earth’s gravity,” she said.
Crew-13 will spend about six months at the station and will be relieved next spring by SpaceX Crew-14. As of October 2026, NASA has purchased enough SpaceX Dragon flights to continue its commercial crew program up to Crew-17. Crew Dragons are expected to make upcoming trips to the space station for shorter-duration private missions, and NASA hopes to return the Boeing Starliner to crewed operations by 2028.
NASA intends to continue flying crews to the International Space Station until its scheduled retirement in 2030.
