NASA’s Crew-10 Returns to Earth with Historic Pacific Ocean Splashdown

The Crew Dragon Endurance capsule touched down at 11:33 a.m. EDT, just off the coast of San Diego. While two private astronaut missions — Fram2 and Axiom-4 — also made West Coast landings earlier this year, today’s return marked a first for a NASA-led mission.

SpaceX shifted splashdowns from Florida to California to reduce the risk of debris from Dragon’s detachable “trunk” section landing on populated areas, a scenario that has occurred in past flights.

Commander Anne McClain and pilot Nichole Ayers (both NASA), along with mission specialists Takuya Onishi (JAXA) and Kirill Peskov (Roscosmos), emerged smiling as recovery crews opened the hatch aboard SpaceX’s retrieval ship.

Crew-10’s launch was initially delayed when their intended brand-new Dragon spacecraft wasn’t ready. NASA and SpaceX ultimately opted to fly Endurance instead, while the new capsule — later christened Grace — supported the Axiom-4 private mission in June.

Crew-11 arrived at the ISS last week, taking over operations as Crew-10 departed at 6:15 p.m. EDT yesterday. The station is now back to its regular complement of seven astronauts and cosmonauts, with NASA and Roscosmos maintaining their “seat swap” policy — ensuring at least one American and one Russian are aboard at all times to operate the station’s interdependent segments.

During a post-landing briefing, NASA ISS Deputy Program Manager Dina Contella confirmed that the U.S.–Russia seat swap agreement is secured through at least one flight in 2027, with further cooperation discussed during a recent visit from Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Bakanov. Bakanov attended the Crew-11 launch and met Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy at Kennedy Space Center, marking the first in-person meeting between the agencies’ leaders in eight years.

The next NASA mission to the ISS — SpaceX’s 33rd cargo flight (SpX-33) — is scheduled for later this month and will feature a new “enhanced reboost” capability. The ISS’s orbit periodically needs boosting to counter atmospheric drag, a task traditionally handled by Russia’s Zvezda and Progress spacecraft.

SpX-33 will carry a special trunk-mounted module that boosts Dragon’s reboost power to three times that of Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus cargo craft. SpaceX’s Sarah Walker said the mission will make four to five burns to provide a total velocity change of 9 meters per second.

With increased solar activity intensifying atmospheric drag, NASA aims to shift more reboost responsibilities to U.S. spacecraft, conserving Russian propellant for the planned ISS deorbit in 2030. That process will use the Russian segment for attitude control while SpaceX’s future U.S. Deorbit Vehicle provides the final thrust to guide the station into a remote area of the Pacific Ocean.

By Azhar