After over 45 years since the last American astronaut made a splashdown in the ocean, NASA and SpaceX are set to land astronauts in the waters again on Aug. 2.
NASA last week announced that the SpaceX Demo-2 commercial crew mission, carrying Bob Behnken and Dough Hurley, is bound for Earth, splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean near Florida. As long as the weather and technical systems cooperate the mission should land at around 2:40 PM EDT, NASA said in a release.
The splashdown will be streamed via NASA TV. The return time for the astronauts will take between six and 30 hours, depending on the exact undocking and splashdown zones chosen. For now, NASA and SpaceX expect to undock Crew Dragon from the International Space Station at 7:34 p.m. EDT (2334 GMT) on Aug. 1.
Sunday's splashdown will be a historic moment. The last time astronauts landed in the ocean was in July 1975, completing the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The Demo-2 splashdown also marks the completion of the first-ever commercial crew test mission -- an achievement for SpaceX that signals its regular, operational flights with NASA.
According to NASA's fact sheet, the exact location of the splashdown will not be revealed until roughly two days before landing, and the agreed-upon area will be confirmed at 6 hours and again at 2.5 hours before undocking. Should conditions be considered a "no go," undocking will most likely still proceed. Of course, NASA and SpaceX will continue to monitor the situation as Behnken and Hurley get closer to our planet, given weather conditions can change quickly.
Once Demo-2 makes it landing, it will usher in a new era for NASA, which will finally have a replacement commercial crew spacecraft ready to launch American astronauts to the International Space Station. SpaceX is set to largely replace Russian spacecraft NASA has relied on since its space shuttle program ceased flights in 2011 to the ISS.
The farewell to the ISS all the way to the splashdown serves as SpaceX's final tests. If all goes well without a glitch, the company will be permitted to provide regular, operational flights to the space station beginning later in 2020.
Meanwhile, NASA and its international partners have officially named the astronauts to fly on SpaceX's Crew-2 mission in 2021. The U.S. space agency announced the names of the crewmembers on July 28.
Crew-2 will be SpaceX's second operational Crew Dragon flight to the International Space Station.
