The SpaceX Crew-11 mission is coming to a close with the crew preparing to depart the International Space Station Wednesday afternoon and splashdown off the coast of California in the predawn hours on Thursday.
The quartet are leaving more than a month earlier than planned in response to a “serious medical concern” with one of the crew members that caused NASA to postpone two scheduled spacewalks. This is the first time that an astronaut medical issue caused NASA to end a mission earlier than planned.
NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Finke along with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Kimiya Yui and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov will suit up in their Dragon flight suits before giving one final goodbye to the three remaining members of Expedition 74.
They’re set to close the hatch on the Dragon Endeavour spacecraft sometime after 3 p.m. EST (2000 UTC) with undocking scheduled for 5:05 p.m. EST (2205 UTC).
Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning around 4:30 p.m. EST (2130 UTC). Timing is subject to change depending on the launch time of the Starlink 6-98 mission from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Crew-11 launched to the ISS from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Aug. 1 and docked with the space station the following day. They were the final crew to arrive during Expedition 73 and welcomed the Soyuz MS-28 spacecraft, the first new crew of Expedition 74.
On Monday, Fincke handed over command of the ISS to Roscomos cosmonaut Sergey Kud-Sverchkov in a brief ceremony. Kud-Sverchkov along with fellow cosmonaut Sergey Mikayev and NASA astronaut Chris Williams will hold down the fort until the arrival of SpaceX Crew-12 sometime in early February.
The various members of Crew-11 have spent the week preparing to leave and saying their goodbyes to life in low Earth orbit. In a message posted to his X account (formerly Twitter) Yui shared some photos he captured of Japan as the space station wizzed overhead at about 17,500 miles per hour.
“The day has finally arrived for our departure to Earth. I haven’t had a chance to photograph daytime Japan recently, but at the very last moment, we passed over the Pacific side of Japan,” Yui wrote, as translated by X. “Mount Fuji bid us farewell, adorned with a touch of crimson makeup from the setting sun. This is my final glimpse of Mount Fuji from space and daytime Japan! Thank you for the magnificent view!”
