Four astronauts said an emotional goodbye to the International Space Station on Sunday, hours after wrapping up a 235-day mission and handing over command of the orbiting laboratory.
NASA astronaut Jessica Meir formally transferred command of the station to Roscosmos cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov during a farewell and change-of-command ceremony held aboard the ISS on Sunday morning, beginning at 10:20 a.m. EDT.
Meir, NASA astronaut Jack Hathaway, ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev launched to the station aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon on Feb. 13. They spent 235 days in orbit — conducting research on pneumonia-causing bacteria, blood flow in spaceflight, and generating intravenous fluids in microgravity, among other experiments.
The moment marked one more chapter in the quiet continuity of U.S.-Russian cooperation aboard the station: after months of working side by side, an American commander handed the station to a Russian cosmonaut while their two space agencies’ crews keep flying together.
The crew’s new replacements — NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 mission (NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, CSA astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov) — arrived Oct. 1 after a record-setting 7-hour, 55-minute flight from Florida, the fastest crewed trip to the station ever.
Crew-12 is scheduled to undock no earlier than 1:05 a.m. EDT Wednesday, Oct. 7, and splash down off the California coast around 11:25 a.m. EDT Thursday, Oct. 8 — weather permitting.
Video: NASA