NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 Flight Day Highlights

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1, consisting of NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker, and Soichi Noguchi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), began its return to Earth on Saturday, May 1, 2021. With their six-month stay on the space station coming to an end, the crew boarded their SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft Resilience, closed the hatches, and undocked from the space station. Hatch closure occurred at 6:26 p.m. EDT, undocking at 8:35 p.m. EDT. Resilience splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico near Panama City, Florida at 2:56 a.m. EDT on Sunday, May 2. Crew-1 is the first of six crewed missions NASA and SpaceX will fly as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program, which worked with the U.S. aerospace industry to resume launches with astronauts on American rockets and spacecraft from American soil.