{"id":12297,"date":"2020-07-31T20:44:26","date_gmt":"2020-07-31T12:44:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/crew-dragon-astronauts-ready-for-re-entry-splashdown\/"},"modified":"2020-07-31T20:44:26","modified_gmt":"2020-07-31T12:44:26","slug":"crew-dragon-astronauts-ready-for-re-entry-splashdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/crew-dragon-astronauts-ready-for-re-entry-splashdown\/","title":{"rendered":"Crew Dragon astronauts ready for re-entry, splashdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION<\/p>\n

\"\"
Crew Dragon astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken aboard the International Space Station. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With Hurricane Isaias threatening Florida\u2019s East Coast, astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken are awaiting a go-ahead on plans to undock from the International Space Station Saturday, setting up a fiery plunge to splashdown Sunday, presumably in the Gulf of Mexico, to close out a 64-day flight.<\/p>\n

Given the track of the hurricane, a splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean at one of three approved sites off Florida\u2019s east coast is effectively ruled out, focusing landing plans on the Gulf where four sites are available off Panama City, Pensacola, Tallahassee and Tampa.<\/p>\n

Assuming NASA and SpaceX press ahead, a final decision on prime and backup landing sites is not expected until Saturday, based on the latest forecasts and assessments of the Crew Dragon\u2019s health. The preferred splashdown zone is just south of Panama City.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe look forward to the weather forecasts that are coming out daily at this point, and they\u2019ll even get more frequent as we get closer to the actual splashdown,\u201d Behnken told reporters in an orbital news conference Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have confidence that the teams on the ground are, of course, watching that much more closely than we are, and we won\u2019t leave the space station without some good splashdown weather in front of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Crew Dragon spacecraft is certified for around 114 days in space and if the weather or some other problem crops up that might rule out undocking for a Sunday landing, \u201cwe know we can stay up here longer,\u201d Behnken said. \u201cThere\u2019s more chow, and I know the space station program\u2019s got more work that we can do for the folks that have sent science up here to the space station.\u201d<\/p>\n

Said Hurley: \u201cWe have some of the best people in the business working on this for us and if the weather is not good, we won\u2019t try to leave tomorrow, we\u2019ll leave on a different day when it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

But assuming the weather cooperates and no technical issues crop up, Behnken and Hurley would undock from the station\u2019s forward port around 7:30 p.m. EDT Saturday, spend the night aboard the Crew Dragon and then fire their braking rockets around 1:50 p.m. EDT Sunday for a splashdown in the Gulf around 2:42 p.m. EDT.<\/p>\n

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This map shows the Crew Dragon\u2019s seven landing zones. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A SpaceX recovery ship, staffed by engineers, medical personnel and fast-response support crews with jet skis and other gear, will be stationed nearby to recover the capsule, pull it on board, help the crew get out and render any medical assistance that might be necessary.<\/p>\n

It will be NASA\u2019s first ocean splashdown in 45 years and the first piloted re-entry of a Crew Dragon capsule. But Hurley and Behnken, both space shuttle veterans and former test pilots, said Friday they are confident the SpaceX capsule will bring them safely back to Earth.<\/p>\n

That said, bobbing about in the sea awaiting recovery while re-adjusting to gravity after an extended stay in weightlessness raises the prospect of post-splashdown nausea and seasickness.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne effect of (a long-duration stay in) space \u2026 is you\u2019re very conditioned to microgravity, and you\u2019re not so conditioned to gravity,\u201d Hurley told James Corden, host of the CBS Late Late Show, in an earlier interview. \u201cAnd then your vestibular system, your inner ears, play tricks with you.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs you can imagine, even if you decided to go deep sea fishing one day, and you\u2019ve lived on Earth your whole life, people get seasick. We\u2019re going to do it from space and end up in the water. So there\u2019s a pretty good likelihood that we may see breakfast twice on that particular day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just in case, Hurley said Friday, \u201cthere are bags if (we) need them and we\u2019ll have those handy, we\u2019ll probably have some towels handy as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ground teams are fully aware of the challenges of the water landing and what it does to the human body,\u201d Hurley said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got the the flight surgeons on board that will be able to help us as well. So all those things are in place and other than that, it\u2019s just time to go give it a give it a try and and see how it goes.<\/p>\n

The Crew Dragon was designed and built by SpaceX under contracts with NASA\u2019s Commercial Crew Program, an initiative aimed at ending the agency\u2019s sole reliance on Russian Soyuz ferry ships for transportation to and from the space station.<\/p>\n

A successful unpiloted test flight was carried out last year, helping clear the way for Hurley and Behnken to blast off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket May 30, the first orbital launch of astronauts aboard an American spacecraft from U.S. soil since the shuttle program\u2019s final flight.<\/p>\n

NASA managers say the Crew Dragon has chalked up a near flawless flight, setting the stage for re-entry and splashdown.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re really excited to see our families,\u201d Behnken said. \u201cMy son is six years old, and I can tell from the videos that I get, talking to him on the phone, that he\u2019s changed a lot, even in the couple of months that we\u2019ve been up here. And so that\u2019s the thing I\u2019m most looking forward to, seeing my family, my wife and my son.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hurley and Behnken are both married to astronauts. Hurley\u2019s wife, Karen Nyberg, is retired from the astronaut corps, but Behnken\u2019s wife, Megan McArthur, is in training for launch to the space station aboard her husband\u2019s Crew Dragon next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION Crew Dragon astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken aboard the International Space Station. Credit: NASA With Hurricane Isaias threatening Florida\u2019s East Coast, astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken are awaiting a go-ahead on plans to undock from the International Space Station Saturday, setting up a fiery plunge to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2125,524,291,235,2126,2127,2034,1545],"class_list":["post-12297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-bob-behnken","tag-commercial-crew","tag-commercial-space","tag-crew-dragon","tag-crew-dragon-demo-2","tag-doug-hurley","tag-expedition-63","tag-human-spaceflight"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12297"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}