Four astronauts returned to Earth early Friday morning, successfully splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida in a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.
The Crew-8 mission — Nasa’s Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps, and Russia’s Alexander Grebenkin — had launched to the International Space Station in March, spending a total of 236 days in space.
But, hours after the group safely returned and had standard post-flight medical evaluations, one of the astronauts experienced a medical issue. Out of an abundance of caution, all four were flown to Pensacola’s Ascension Sacred Heart Hospitalfor an additional assessment.
Upon completing a medical evaluation at the hospital, three of the Crew-8 astronauts left the city and hopped on a flight to the Texas-based Johnson Space Center.
Nasa said the astronaut who remains at Ascension is in stable condition and remains under observation as a precautionary measure. The astronaut’s identity or condition will not be shared to protect their privacy.
“We’re grateful to Ascension Sacred Heart for its support during this time, and we are proud of our team for its quick action to ensure the safety of our crew members,” Nasa said in a statement.
The SpaceX capsule’s parachutes deployed and the spacecraft splashed down near Pensacola at 3:29 a.m. ET. Teams on SpaceX’s recovery ship secured the spacecraft and hoisted it onto a recovery ship’s main deck.
Nasa said the SpaceX dragon had executed a normal entry and splashdown and that recovery of the crew and spacecraft was “without incident.”
At the end of their seven-and-a-half-month mission, Nasa said that Crew-8 had orbited the Earth 3,776 times, traveling more than 100 million statute miles.
Seven Expedition 72 crew members — a normal crew size — remain on the orbiting laboratory after Endeavour’s Wednesday departure. Dragon undocked from the space station at 5:05 p.m. on Wednesday.
The Crew-8 astronauts’ return came after an extended stay following problems with Boeing’s Starliner capsule and Hurricane Milton. They should have been back two months ago.
Barratt, the only space veteran going into the mission, previously said that the support teams back on Earth had “to replan, retool and kind of redo everything right along with us ... and helped us to roll with all those punches.”
Starliner test pilots and Nasa astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, whose own mission went from eight days to eight months, will remain on the space station until February. They are assigned to the SpaceX Crew-9 mission.
With reporting from The Associated Press
