LIVE: SpaceX Demo-2 Crew Dragon SPLASHDOWN
6NASA and SpaceX are ready for a Sunday, 2 August 2020 deorbit and splashdown of NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley aboard the Crew Dragon Endeavour. The return to Earth will bring an end to the historic first private-company spaceflight of humans to Earth orbit and the commencement of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
Splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico is expected at 2:48 pm EDT (18:48 UTC) off the southern coast of Alabama and southwest of Pensacola, Florida.
Weather at the recovery area is — as of publication — showing 1 mph winds and calm seas, perfect weather for Dragon.
A back-up site existed until roughly 08:48 EDT (12:48 EDT) at Panama City, Florida. However, after that time, Dragon no longer had the ability to adjust its orbit to aligned with Panama City, committing the craft to Pensacola, Florida, for Sunday’s return attempt.
The splashdown will culminate the historic Demo-2 flight which launched humans into orbit on the first-ever privately owned and operated rocket and spacecraft from LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center on 30 May 2020.
The launch marked the first time since the final flight of space shuttle Atlantis in 2011 that humans launched into orbit from the United States, and this historic splashdown will be the first landing of a spacecraft with humans on board in the Gulf of Mexico.
Moreso, it will mark the first end of mission water landing for a U.S. human space flight since Apollo-Soyuz Test Program in July 1975 and the first global human spaceflight water landing since Soyuz 23 accidentally came down in Lake Tengiz on 16 October 1976.