Four space station planes undock and head for Friday’s splashdown to conclude their extended mission

In conclusion of a mission extended by 235 daysthree NASA astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut attached to their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule and detached from the International Space Station on Wednesday, aiming for a pre-dawn Friday landing in the Gulf of Mexico.

With Crew 8 “Endeavour” commander Matthew Dominick and co-pilot Michael Barrett monitoring the cockpit screens, flanked on the right by cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin and on the left by NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps, the Crew Dragon detached from the Harmony module of the laboratory at 5:05 a.m. pm EDT and backed away slowly.

“Endeavour, depart,” called space station commander Sunita Williams, ringing the ship’s bell, in keeping with naval tradition. “Fair winds and following seas.”

Remaining on board the station were Crew 9 Commander Nick Hague and his teammates, cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov and Boeing Starliner astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Williams, as well as Soyuz cosmonauts Aleksey Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and his teammate from NASA Donald Pettit.

If all goes well, the Crew 8 Dragon will crash into the Gulf of Mexico at 3:29 a.m. Friday to cap a nearly eight-month mission spanning 3,776 orbits and 100 million miles since its launch from the Kennedy Space Center in March. 3.

The crew initially expected to return to Earth in September, but the flight was postponed until early October following the decision to delay the launch of Crew 9 from late August to late September in order to allow Wilmore and Williams to return home.

The Starliner returned to Earth on September 7 without its crew on board for safety reasons. The Crew 9 Dragon was then launched on September 28 with just two passengersThe Hague and Gorbounov. This freed up two seats for Starliner Commander Wilmore and First Officer Williams, who will return to Earth next February with Hague and Gorbunov.

Sorting through all of this pushed Crew 8’s departure until October. Dominick and company were then repeatedly hampered by high winds and rough seas, largely hurricane-related, at landing sites in the Gulf of Mexico and along the east coast of Florida.

But forecasters expected favorable conditions Friday, and the Crew 8 planes were finally cleared to proceed with undocking.