FLORIDA — If all goes well, NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 members might be leaving the International Space Station on Tuesday night to return home to Earth.

SpaceX’s Dragon capsule Endeavour is expected to undock from the floating laboratory’s space-facing Harmony module port and will have a thrilling ride back down to Earth in a splashdown off the coast of Florida.

However, poor weather is making the undocking iffy.

“Forecasts remain marginal for an undocking on Tuesday, Oct. 22, and Wednesday, Oct. 23. If weather conditions improve, NASA and SpaceX will target no earlier than 9:05 p.m. EDT, Oct. 22, for undocking from the space station. Based on the current forecast, conditions are expected to improve as the week progresses,” NASA stated.

Nothing has been confirmed for when the splashdown will occur, but NASA stated that depending on the time of the undocking and other factors like weather conditions, it can take six to 39 hours for the Crew-8 to return to Earth.

No exact location has been given for the different splash zones, but Mother Nature has not been kind for the return home.

Trying to return home

Crew-8 members NASA astronauts Cmdr. Matthew Dominick, pilot Michael Barratt, and mission specialists Jeanette Epps and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin took off from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center back in March.

They were originally supposed to return home in August, but the mission was extended several times, especially as NASA investigated Boeing’s troubled Starliner capsule.  

What was supposed to be an eightish-day mission for Starliner’s Cmdr. Barry “Butch” Wilmore and pilot Sunita “Suni” Williams in June turned into a months-long odyssey as their craft suffered from thruster issues and helium leaks.

NASA kept pushing their stay on the ISS as engineers launched an investigation, which resulted in the Crew-8 staying onboard longer in case an emergency occurred, where Wilmore and Williams would have needed SpaceX’s Dragon to return home.

Eventually, the Starliner returned home without its crew. And Crew-9, which was launched to the ISS last month, will return to Earth with the Starliner pair in February 2025.

Williams was made commander of Expedition 72. An expedition means the current crew in the International Space Station.

And the International Space Station has gotten crowded these last few months. Usually it holds about seven people, plus any guests who plan on being there for a short time. But between the Starliner crew, Crew-8, Crew-9 and Soyuz MS-25, there are a total of 11 people.

NASA and SpaceX were set to see Crew-8 undock on Sunday, Oct. 13, and splashing down on Monday, Oct. 14, but Hurricane Milton changed their plans.

Other undocking dates were issued — Oct. 18, Oct. 20 and Oct. 21 — but weather conditions were unfavorable for the different splashdown zones.

The ride back home

The Dragon is fully autonomous from the moment it undocks from Harmony to the splashdown, yet the crew can take control if needed.

And it is one heck of a ride. Using a series of parachute deployments, the Dragon will slow down from an orbital speed of about 17,500 mph (2,816 kph) to 350 mph (482 kph) to about 16 mph (25 kph) when it softly lands off the coast of Florida.

Depending on where the Dragon will be screaming over, some lucky people may hear a sonic boom.

Learn all about sonic booms here.