Crew-12 Leaves the ISS: Hatch Closure Aboard Dragon Freedom

On the morning of the Crew-12 departure from the International Space Station, four people climbed into the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft Freedom and closed the hatch behind them at 5:05 a.m. Central (6:05 a.m. Eastern). The crew was NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. Undocking was scheduled for 7:05 a.m. Central (8:05 a.m. Eastern), with splashdown off the coast of California targeted for the next day, October 8, at about 10:34 a.m. Central (11:34 a.m. Eastern).

Handover and go decisions

The crew had been given a go from both NASA and SpaceX for hatch close. The description had listed the closure for 6:20 a.m. Eastern, and the hatch was reported closed at 6:05 a.m. Eastern. Weather was reported go for undocking and splashdown, with winds, visibility and wave heights all acceptable and expected to stay so until splashdown.

The day's flight control team was led by NASA Flight Director Brandon Lloyd and his Adagio flight team. Rob Hayhurst served as Capcom, the capsule communicator who speaks directly with the crew on station. Teams in Mission Control Houston worked with SpaceX teams in Hawthorne, California.

The departure came about a week after the arrival of Crew-13, which brought four new crew members and made a total of 11 people aboard the station. Just days earlier, on Sunday, Meir had handed command of the station to Roscosmos cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov.

Inside Dragon Freedom

Once the hatch was shut, the crew began suiting up and getting secured in their seats, and they were to stay suited through undocking. Adenot was seen helping with Meir's suit. Hathaway sat in the pilot seat and Meir in the commander seat. Afterward the crew worked through suit leak checks, and a successful intercom check was reported. Dragon reported its donning complete, and it was given a go for suit leak checks. Later the crew was told to initiate the suit leak check. The call "we see four good suits" came from the ground near the end of the coverage.

After undocking, the crew could take off their suits and would have an off-duty period inside Dragon ahead of splashdown.

NASA astronaut Anil Menon monitored the undocking operations from the station's cupola and spoke with the Capcom. He received a go to close the A-PAS hatch and confirmed closing. The Dragon crew then reported the A-PAS hatch and equalization valves closed, ready for depressurization of the vestibule. Houston said it would wait on that until good suit leak checks were confirmed. The vestibule is the short tunnel between the Dragon and station hatches that is exposed to the vacuum of space. Menon also asked about bags in the PMA, which he identified as SpaceX 35 departure bags.

Cargo and science

Over the preceding days the crew packed Dragon with cargo. Meir and Hathaway removed cold bags and polar freezers, which store cold research samples and scientific experiments, and loaded them into Dragon. After the crew is helped out following splashdown, the science and cargo is offloaded, and the samples are to go to researchers for final analysis within a few hours.

Mission in numbers

• Hathaway and Adenot were making their first trip to space.
• Upon splashdown, Meir would total 442 days in space across two flights.
• Fedyaev would have logged 423 days across two missions.
• Crew-12 spent 235 days aboard the station, which saw seven visiting vehicles arrive and seven depart in that time.
• Meir conducted four spacewalks during the stay, bringing her career total to seven.
• The crew orbited Earth 3,792 times and traveled over 100 million statute miles.
• Dragon Freedom arrived 235 days earlier and would have spent 237 days in space by splashdown.
• It was the fifth flight of Freedom, which also supported Crew-4, Axiom Mission 2, Axiom Mission 3 and Crew-9.