Tomorrow’s Rocket Roundup is so jam-packed with launches that we’re letting human space flight news sneak in with our science.

Late on Monday night, November 8, Eastern time, Crew Dragon C206 successfully completed its second trip to space with a splashdown off the coast of Pensacola, Florida, bringing back the members of the SpaceX Crew 2 mission: NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, ESA Astronaut Thomas Pesquet, and JAXA astronaut Aki Hoshide came back to Earth after 199 days in space. They suited up and undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) in the afternoon before landing in the evening.

After undocking, Crew Dragon Endeavour performed an autonomous flyby of the station to allow the astronauts to photograph and analyze its condition, the first time this was done since 2018. Astronaut Pesquet took pictures out of the small window in the forward hatch of the Dragon to accomplish this task. Commander Kimbrough and Pilot McArthur were ready to take control if they needed to, but Dragon did all maneuvers by itself. After a full orbit of the station, Dragon performed two more burns to depart the ISS. Also returning with the crew is 240 kilograms of science results and old hardware from the station. These supplies were secured to the floor of the capsule.

Crew 2 was originally supposed to depart after Crew 3 arrived, performing a direct handover, but instead, they returned before the launch of Crew 3. Crew 3 has been repeatedly delayed due to crew illness and poor launch weather. The Crew Dragon is only rated for 210 days in space, so delaying the departure for a direct handover would have pushed the capsule past the limit unnecessarily.

In addition, the landing weather was forecast to get worse every day they delayed returning, so the eighth was the best day to meet all of the requirements. The crew of Soyuz MS-19 is still on the station, keeping it in operating condition until Crew 3 brings it back up to its full complement of seven astronauts sometime later this week.

More Information

Twitter: SpaceX announcement

NASA press release