SpaceX’s Crew-5 astronaut mission for NASA is scheduled to depart from the International Space Station on Saturday (March 11), and you can watch the action live.
A SpaceX Dragon capsule carrying the Crew-5 quartet — NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann, Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina and Japan’s Koichi Wakata — is scheduled to lift off from the International Space Station (ISS) at 2:05 a.m. EST (0705 GMT) on Saturday, completing five months in orbit.
You can watch the kite’s departure live here on Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly through the agency (opens in new tab). Coverage begins at 12 EST (0500 GMT) on Saturday. NASA delayed the departure from the ISS twice due to weather problems from previously announced times on Wednesday (March 7) and Thursday (March 8).
The deorbit burn that starts the splashdown will take place at 8:25 p.m. EST Saturday (0125 GMT Sunday, March 12) with the splashdown expected to take place around 9:19 PM EST Saturday (0219 GMT Sunday, March 12).
Related: Auroras, spacecraft mods and more: SpaceX Crew-5 astronauts reflect on their time in orbit
Crew-5 was launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on October 5, 2022. It was a historic lift, making Mann the first Indian woman to reach space and Kikina the first Russian to fly into orbit with a private American spacecraft.
The Crew-5 astronauts have spent five eventful months away from Earth. They are e.g. were treated to some beautiful aurora displays, and two Russian vehicles docked to the ISS — a Soyuz crew carrier and a robotic Progress cargo ship — sprung a leak during the astronauts’ stay on the station.
Crew-5’s Dragon, called Endurance, was briefly modified to accommodate an additional passenger—one of the three Soyuz astronauts, NASA’s Frank Rubio—in case an emergency evacuation of the ISS was required. But those mods were removed last month after Russia launched a replacement Soyuz that will take Rubio and his two Russian crew members home to Earth this fall.
There will still be a SpaceX mission at the ISS after Crew-5 departs: Crew-6 arrived at the orbiting lab early Friday morning (March 3) aboard Dragon Endeavour.
The Crew-6 astronauts — NASA’s Woody Hoburg and Stephen Bowen, the United Arab Emirates’ Sultan Al Neyadi and cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev — are scheduled to live aboard the ISS for the next six months.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out there (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the hunt for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or Facebook (opens in new tab).