SpaceX’s Crew-9 astronauts had some company in the water after they splashed down on Tuesday afternoon (March 18).
The Crew-9 mission returned to Earth at 5:57 p.m. EDT (2157 GMT) on Tuesday, splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida. A fleet of recovery vessels soon converged on Crew-9’s Dragon capsule, named Freedom — and so did some curious marine mammals, who wanted to check out this strange object that fell from the sky into their domain.
“Wow! We got a cute little pod of dolphins, not just one or two,” SpaceX engineer Kate Tice said during the NASA-SpaceX webcast of Crew-9’s entry, descent and landing.
Freedom carried four people — NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore and Aleksandr Gorbunov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos — home from the International Space Station (ISS).
Hague and Gorbunov rode up to the station aboard Freedom in late September, on the launch of SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission. Williams and Wilmore, on the other hand, reached the ISS on the first crewed flight of Boeing’s Starliner capsule, which lifted off in early June.
Related: How NASA’s Starliner mission went from 10 days to 9 months: A timeline
The Starliner mission was supposed to last just 10 days or so, but the capsule experienced issues with its propulsion system, delaying its departure from the ISS multiple times.
Finally, on Aug. 24, NASA decided to bring Starliner home uncrewed, which happened on Sept. 7, and put Williams and Wilmore on Freedom for the trip back home at the end of Crew-9’s orbital stay. That decision required taking two people off the original Crew-9 manifest (NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson) to save seats for the Starliner duo on the return to Earth. So Freedom lifted off last fall with only Hague and Gorbunov on board.
Crew-9’s splashdown was memorable and dramatic even before the dolphins showed up. It brought an end to the long space saga of Wilmore and Williams, which was a big story from the outset but became turbo-charged recently.
The extra attention came courtesy of President Donald Trump and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who claimed that the Biden administration had “virtually abandoned” the Starliner duo in space. Musk further alleged that this was done “for political reasons.” The assertions were puzzling, given that the plan to bring Williams and Wilmore home via SpaceX had been in place since August of last year.
Crew-9’s return also marked the last time that a Dragon capsule will hit the water near the U.S. East Coast; SpaceX is moving its Dragon recovery operations to the West Coast, to reduce the chances that debris from the reentering capsule could cause damage or injuries on the ground.
“I just hope the California coast can bring as many dolphins as we saw during today’s operation,” Sarah Walker, SpaceX’s director of Dragon mission management, said during a post-splashdown press conference on Tuesday. “That was really fun to see!”
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