Dragon Departs Station for Splashdown Off the Coast of Florida

Sept. 3, 2023: International Space Station Configuration. Five spaceships are parked at the space station including the SpaceX Dragon Endurance, Northrop Grumman's Cygnus space freighter, the Soyuz MS-23 crew ship, and the Progress 84 and 85 resupply ships.
Sept. 3, 2023: International Space Station Configuration. Five spaceships are parked at the space station including the SpaceX Dragon Endurance, Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus space freighter, the Soyuz MS-23 crew ship, and the Progress 84 and 85 resupply ships.

The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft with NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, along with UAE (United Arab Emirates) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev  inside undocked from the forward-facing port of the International Space Station’s Harmony module at 7:05 a.m. EDT to complete a  six-month science mission.

NASA coverage of Crew-6’s return will continue with audio only, and full coverage will resume at the start of the splashdown broadcast. Real-time audio between Crew-6 and flight controllers at NASA’s Mission Audio stream will remain available and includes conversations with astronauts aboard the space station and a live video feed from the orbiting laboratory.

NASA TV coverage will resume at 11 p.m. Sunday until Endeavour splashes down at approximately 12:17 a.m. EDT Monday, Sept. 4, near Jacksonville off the coast of Florida and Crew-6 members are recovered.

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-6 mission launched March 2, 2023, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and docked to the space station the next day.


More details about the mission and NASA’s commercial crew program can be found by following the commercial crew blog@commercial_crew and commercial crew on Facebook.

Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog@space_station and @ISS_Research on X, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.

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SpaceX Crew-6 Mission Docks to Station’s Harmony Module

The four SpaceX Crew-6 members (from left) Andrey Fedyaev, Woody Hoburg, Stephen Bowen, and Sultan Alnedayi, are pictured inside the Crew Dragon Endeavour prior to launching.
The four SpaceX Crew-6 members (from left) Andrey Fedyaev, Woody Hoburg, Stephen Bowen, and Sultan Alnedayi, are pictured inside the Crew Dragon Endeavour prior to launching.

NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, along with UAE (United Arab Emirates) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev arrived at the International Space Station on Friday, as the SpaceX Dragon, named Endeavour, docked to the complex at 1:40 a.m. EST while the station was 260 statute miles over the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Somalia.

Docking was delayed slightly as mission teams completed troubleshooting of a faulty docking hook sensor on Dragon. The NASA and SpaceX teams verified that all of the docking hooks were in the proper configuration, and SpaceX developed a software override for the faulty sensor that allowed the docking process to successfully continue.

Following Dragon’s link up to the Harmony module, the astronauts aboard the Dragon and the space station will begin conducting standard leak checks and pressurization between the spacecraft in preparation for hatch opening scheduled for 3:18 a.m.

Crew-6 will join the Expedition 68 crew of NASA astronauts Frank Rubio, Nicole Mann, and Josh Cassada, as well as Koichi Wakata of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitri Petelin, and Anna Kikina. For a short time, the number of crew on the space station will increase to 11 people until Crew-5 departs.

NASA Television and the agency’s website are continuing to provide live continuous coverage of the agency’s SpaceX Crew-6 mission.


More details about the Crew-6 mission can be found by following the Crew-6 blog, the commercial crew blog, @commercial_crew on Twitter, and commercial crew on Facebook.

Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog@space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.

Get weekly video highlights at: https://roundupreads.jsc.nasa.gov/videoupdate/

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SpaceX Crew-6 Mission Approaching Station for Docking

From left, are SpaceX Crew-6 Mission Specialist Andrey Fedyaev, Commander Stephen Bowen, Pilot Warren "Woody" Hoburg, and Mission Specialist Sultan Alneyadi. Credit: SpaceX
From left, are SpaceX Crew-6 Commander Stephen Bowen, Pilot Warren “Woody” Hoburg, and Mission Specialists Sultan Alneyadi and Andrey Fedyaev,. Credit: SpaceX

NASA Television and the agency’s website are providing live continuous coverage of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-6 mission carrying NASA astronauts, Mission Commander Stephen Bowen and Pilot Woody Hoburg, along with UAE (United Arab Emirates) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev on their way to the International Space Station.

The Dragon spacecraft, named Endeavour, began the final phase of its approach to the station at 12:15 a.m. EST on Friday, March 3, and is scheduled to dock at 12:43 a.m. Dragon is designed to dock autonomously, but the crew aboard the spacecraft and the space station will monitor the performance of the spacecraft as it approaches and docks to the forward port of the station’s Harmony module.

When the hatches open about 2:21 a.m. the Crew-6 astronauts will join the Expedition 68 crew of NASA astronauts Frank Rubio, Nicole Mann, and Josh Cassada, as well as Koichi Wakata of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitri Petelin, and Anna Kikina. For a short time, the number of crew on the space station will increase to 11 people until Crew-5 departs.


More details about the Crew-6 mission can be found by following the Crew-6 blog, the commercial crew blog, @commercial_crew on Twitter, and commercial crew on Facebook.

Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog@space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.

Get weekly video highlights at: https://roundupreads.jsc.nasa.gov/videoupdate/

Get the latest from NASA delivered every week. Subscribe here: www.nasa.gov/subscribe