Nasa Crew-3 return to Earth delayed extra day after six months in space

Astronauts will splash down in water off Florida after science mission aboard the space station

Nasa’s Crew-3 mission to the International Space Station will spend at least one additional day in space before returning to Earth after the space agency delayed their homecoming.

The four Crew-3 astronauts were scheduled to return to Earth on Thursday, but Nasa’s head of human spaceflight Kathy Lueders said that the new schedule will allow forecasters more time to review weather around the Florida coast, where the astronauts will splash down in their SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft just after midnight Eastern time on Friday.

Axiom-1, the first all private mission to the ISS, was delayed in returning to Earth for several days in late April because of bad weather, which kept Nasa’s Crew-4 mission, the replacement team for Crew-3, from launching until 27 April.

The Crew-3 team— Nasa astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, and Kayla Barron, as well as European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer — arrived on the ISS in November, and have spent the past months conducting science experiments and spacewalks.

Nasa’s crew-4 astronauts, Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines, and Jessica Watkins, along with ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, will also spend roughly six months aboard the ISS, returning to Earth sometime in the autumn of 2022.

Crew-3 and Crew-4 are the third and fourth missions of Nasa’s Commercial Crew program, which contracts with private space launch companies to ferry astronauts to and from the space station.

So far, only SpaceX has flown Commercial Crew missions, using the company’s Falcon 9 rocket to loft Crew Dragon spacecraft into orbit.