Crew-12 Crew Look Back on 237 Days Aboard the ISS

NASA's SpaceX Crew-12 returned to Earth on Thursday, October 8, after 237 days aboard the International Space Station. At a postflight news conference at Johnson Space Center on October 15, 2026, commander Jessica Meir, pilot Jack Hathaway and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev described a mission that proved far busier than they expected. ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot, the fourth crew member, had returned to Europe for postflight activities and did not attend.

A busier mission than planned

Meir said the crew did not know before flight how busy the mission would be. It included lots of spacewalks, lots of science and many visiting cargo and crew vehicles. The crew overlapped with the Soyuz 74S and 75S crews, which Meir said changed the dynamic on board. They also gained several extra months when the launch of Crew-13 was delayed. Meir said the pace is likely to continue as the station is prepared for its end and deorbited, which requires a number of spacewalks. At the time of the conference, the crew still aboard were receiving a SpaceX Dragon cargo vehicle and were expected to do several more spacewalks for iROSA solar array upgrades.

The Zvezda leak and the shelter in place

In June, the leak rate increased in the Russian segment, where cracks had been known in the part called Pirs. Five people on board sheltered in a Crew Dragon capsule while the other crew evaluated how to test the cracks. Meir said NASA still had unknowns it was not comfortable with, and Roscosmos wanted to do testing. Her stated worry was a destructive event in which the crack unfolds and affects the structural integrity of the rest of the station.

Meir said the media portrayed it as a high-stakes event in which the station was about to depressurize, which she said was not the case. The sheltering crew did not feel their lives were in danger, and they were in the vehicle for less than an hour before the two teams reached consensus. Since then the Pirs hatch has stayed closed and the module depressurized, which she described as the safest posture. NASA and Roscosmos continue to work out the best posture going forward. Fedyaev said Russian crew members have special training for dealing with leaks and cracks, and that crew safety is paramount.

Life in orbit

Food was a recurring theme. Fedyaev made elaborate cakes for birthdays and milestones such as 100 and 200 days in space, and Meir said she enjoyed them more than cakes on Earth. The conference fell on the birthday of a crewmate on board, and Fedyaev said he had asked Anya to make a cake for Pyotr and Sergey. Meir also credited Peggy Whitson with passing down a method of roasting onions in foil with a water packet and olive oil.

Adenot, Meir said, worked with Michelin-starred chef Anne Sophie Pic in France on space meals, and sacrificed part of her personal food allocation so the crew could share them. There were three or three and a half shared meals with four or five dishes, some based on childhood dishes made by Adenot's grandmother.

On smell, Hathaway said the station smells fairly normal, but opening an airlock released an unmistakable burnt smell, which Meir said some compare to hot metal or gunpowder. Meir said weightlessness brings levity and playfulness, and that after landing her arms felt as if they weighed 50 lb each. With Chris Williams, she did a daily flying high five across the lab module for at least four months. Hathaway said he learned about torque wrenches by drawing force diagrams with Williams, and Meir said she learned that quadruple-A batteries exist.

Readjusting to gravity

Fedyaev explained that exercise trains the big muscles, while the small muscles that maintain balance forget how to work in weightlessness, so standing on one leg is hard. Meir added that parts of the inner ear are gravity-dependent. She said her test video was recorded a couple of hours after splashdown, after the crew went by helicopter straight to a test facility. In a manual piloting study she did at the same point, she successfully landed a simulator on the Moon. The next day she repeated the balance test with her eyes closed without a problem. She said recovery is not comparable to relearning to walk after a spinal injury, and she does not see it as insurmountable for future long missions. Her concern is keeping enough reserve for an off-nominal return, such as a splashdown with nobody there to help the crew out.

First flight and parting reflections

Hathaway, on his first flight, said everything surprised him, from eating to sleeping to working with tools, and that the learning curve was steep. After a month or two he could plan work in three dimensions, such as putting his feet on the ceiling to flip upside down and reach a bolt.

Asked for one word to describe the mission, Meir chose joy, Hathaway chose challenge, and Fedyaev chose crew. Meir said she wished everyone could see Earth from orbit, with its thin band of atmosphere. Hathaway named teamwork across control centers worldwide, and Fedyaev said life on the station shows people can live without borders. Asked about courage, Hathaway said it is more about trust in training, hardware and teams.