Crew-13 arrived at station last week to begin six-month rotation

Three astronauts and a cosmonaut from NASA’s Crew-12 mission returned to Earth on Thursday, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Los Angeles after an almost eight-month trip to the International Space Station. Their trip home started about 45 minutes before touchdown, at an orbital speed of 17,500 mph. The spacecraft lit its thrusters to nudge itself out of orbit, sending the capsule plunging into the atmosphere, where its ablative heat shield encountered temperatures up to 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit during the fiery reentry. Over about half an hour the capsule slowed to a few hundred miles per hour, then four orange-and-white parachutes eased it to a final speed of 16 mph above the water.

The crew was led by NASA’s Jessica Meir, with Jack Hathaway as pilot, Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency as a mission specialist, and Andrey Fedyaev of Russia’s Roscosmos as a mission specialist. The mission launched in February on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and docked with the station the following day. It marked the 20th time SpaceX has sent humans into orbit.

During the eight months aboard the station, NASA said, the crew completed dozens of science experiments and research projects, including studies of stem cells, how crystals grow in space, and bone loss in microgravity. Meir conducted four spacewalks totaling just over 27 hours to perform maintenance and upgrade the aging orbital outpost, while Adenot performed three spacewalks.

Before departing, the Crew-12 astronauts and cosmonaut were relieved by the three astronauts and cosmonaut of Crew-13, who arrived at the station last week to start a six-month rotation.

Speaking at a pre-departure news conference aboard the station last month, Meir, a two-time space veteran, said she was looking forward to reuniting with her 3½-year-old daughter. She also spoke about missing sensory experiences unavailable in microgravity. “So looking forward to seeing nature again, feeling the breeze on my face, the wind rustling through the leaves. Experiencing all those things that we don’t have up here,” Meir said. She named two things she would miss about space: weightlessness and the views of Earth.