SpaceX Crew 2 Flight Day 3 Highlights - November 9, 2021

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-2, consisting of NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Aki Hoshide of Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency), began its return to Earth on Monday, Nov. 8, 2021. With their six-month stay on the space station coming to an end, the astronauts boarded their SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft Endeavour, closed the hatches, and undocked from the space station. Hatch closure occurred at 12:12 p.m. EST, undocking at 2:05 p.m. The capsule performed a fly-around observation of the space station before starting its journey home. Endeavour splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico near Pensacola, Florida, at 10:33 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 8. Crew-2 is the second of six crewed missions NASA and SpaceX will fly as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program, which worked with the U.S. aerospace industry to resume launches with astronauts on American rockets and spacecraft from American soil.