Florida – NASA’s live coverage is underway on NASA+ ahead of hatch closure and undocking preparations for the return of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission.
NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams, and Butch Wilmore, along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, will closed the hatch at approximately 11:15pm EDT Monday between the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and the International Space Station.
NASA will provide live undocking coverage at 12:45am, Tuesday, March 18th, on NASA+. The spacecraft will autonomously undock from the space station at 1:05am to begin the roughly 17-hour return to Earth.
The Crew-9 mission is targeting a splashdown at approximately 5:57pm March 18th off the coast of Florida. NASA will provide coverage of deorbit burn, entry, and landing beginning at 4:45pm on NASA+.
As part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, the Crew-9 mission will return important and time-sensitive research to Earth after completing a long-duration science mission aboard the orbiting laboratory. Hague and Gorbunov lifted off at 1:17pm September 28th, 2024, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
The next day, Dragon docked to the forward-facing port of the station’s Harmony module. Williams and Wilmore launched aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft and United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket on June 5th, 2024, from Space Launch Complex 41 as part of the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test. The duo arrived at the space station on June 6th. In August, NASA announced the uncrewed return of Starliner to Earth and integrated Wilmore and Williams as part of the space station’s Expedition 71/72 for a return on Crew-9.
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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