WASHINGTON — A Crew Dragon spacecraft successfully returned to Earth from the International Space Station early Oct. 25, ending a record-breaking mission.

The Crew Dragon spacecraft Endeavor splashed into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola, Florida at 3:29 a.m. ET. The spacecraft undocked from the ISS at 17:05 EST on October 23.

Splashdown marked the end of the Crew-8 mission, with returning NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin. The four spent 235 days in space, including 232 on the station.

That 235-day mission is a record for the longest flight by an American manned spacecraft. Crew-8 set the first record because a more than a month delay in Crew-9’s launch, which gave NASA time to evaluate what to do with the Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft that flew to the station in a manned test flight. NASA decided to bring the Starliner back without a crew and launch only two people on Crew-9 to free up seats for Starliner astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams.

Crew-9 was launched on September 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 the astronauts time to remove temporary seating arrangements for Wilmore and Williams in Endeavour, if evacuation was required. the station.

“That extra time we spent on that handover was unfortunate meteorologically,” he said at a post-splashdown briefing, because by the time Endeavor was ready to turn, Hurricane Milton was in the Gulf, delaying the spacecraft’s return. That storm, followed by a persistent high-pressure system that sustained winds over splash sites on Florida’s Gulf and Atlantic coasts, ended up delaying the return by nearly three weeks.

There was nothing NASA and SpaceX could do but wait for conditions to improve. “There are no lessons learned from this perspective. You just have to wait for that good weather to come along,” he said, noting that such delays could be expected this time of year, near the height of the Atlantic hurricane season. “In that time frame, we can expect some extended stays from that perspective.”

NASA and SpaceX announced earlier this year that SpaceX will move the Dragon sprayers off the coast of California in 2025a move intended to allow for a change in re-entry procedures to ensure that the Dragon’s fuselage section burns up over the ocean after several fuselages re-entered on land with fragments reaching the ground. SpaceX noted that the change should allow for better weather for splashdowns as well.

Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice president of construction and flight reliability, said at the briefing that the company planned to begin blasts on the West Coast in early 2025. “When we make that move, the intent will be to stay on the West Coast for recovery and move activities there,” he said.

The extended stay in orbit presented no problem for the Crew Dragon itself, he said. NASA originally certified Crew Dragon for 210 days in space, but extended it by 30 days to accommodate delays in the return of Crew-8.

“In terms of on-orbit capability, this vehicle has done extremely well with its 235 days in space,” he said. “I think we could easily expand that quite a bit. We don’t see a lifetime problem with that.” He said later in the briefing that SpaceX would consider working with NASA to formally certify a Crew Dragon orbital lifetime of more than 235 days.

With the departure of Crew-8, the ISS returned to its normal crew of seven for the first time since Williams and Wilmore arrived at the station on the Starliner in early June. The station still has “good supplies” of food and other supplies, said Bill Spetch, NASA’s director of ISS integration and operations, with some additional supplies flown to the station in August on the NG-21 Cygnus cargo mission.

Before weather-related delays to Crew-8’s return, NASA also added supplies for the next Dragon cargo mission, SpX-31, now scheduled to launch no earlier than Nov. 4. “We have a few specific things that the crew has requested. that they ended up telling us we were going to send the SpX-31,” he said, “but we didn’t have to replace anything for that.”

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