Astronaut Anne McClain to return Saturday after back to back undocking delays, here's how to watchNick Gibson,
The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.
Updated Thu, August 7, 2025 at 10:05 PM EDT
2 min read
Aug. 7—Inland Northwest residents can watch U.S. Army colonel and NASA astronaut Anne McClain return to Earth on Saturday, as long as her undocking from the International Space Station is not postponed again.
NASA's SpaceX Crew-10 mission is coming to a close this weekend, five months after McClain and company launched to the floating laboratory aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule as part of the ongoing Commercial Crew Program, in which the space agency partners with commercial companies for crew rotations aboard the ISS. Joining McClain were fellow NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers, Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov and Takuya Onishi, an astronaut with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Roscosmos is the Russian space agency.
On Friday, McClain, Ayers, Peskov and Onishi will climb back into the same Dragon capsule that brought them to the space station for their more than 17-hour return trip. The crew is expected to undock from the station no earlier than 3:05 p.m. Pacific Time Friday and splash down off the coast of California around 8:30 a.m. Saturday.
NASA plans to provide live coverage of the undocking, return flight and splashdown on their free streaming service NASA+, as well as a number of commercial streaming platforms. A complete guide on how to follow along from home can be found on the space agency's website.
Crew-10 will be the first to land off the West Coast as part of the commercial crew program, after NASA and SpaceX officials moved the landing zone from off the coast of Florida to reduce the chance of debris falling over populated areas. The move took a "huge amount of work," said Steve Stich, manager of NASA's commercial crew program.
"We had to establish new landing sites on the West Coast, new staging areas, look at the medical facilities, obtain support from other government agencies," including the Federal Aviation Administration, Stich said in a news conference days before Crew-10's March launch.
In repositioning the landing zone to the West Coast, NASA and SpaceX officials also have cited better weather conditions and less risk of volatile storms delaying returns, as previously reported by The Spokesman-Review.
Crew-10's return originally was scheduled to occur Wednesday, then was pushed to Thursday due to weather. High winds at the splash down site in the Pacific led to another scrubbed undocking attempt Thursday.
"Mission managers continue monitoring weather conditions in the area, as undocking of the SpaceX Dragon depends on spacecraft readiness, recovery team readiness, weather, sea states, and other factors," NASA said in a news release Thursday.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/astronaut-anne-mcclain-return-saturday-020500734.html
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