HAWTHORNE, Calif. — The four astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-12 mission are getting ready to trade weightlessness for a hot shower, wrapping up a seven-month expedition aboard the International Space Station that has stacked up spacewalks, robotics milestones and a full slate of microgravity science.
NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev launched aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon on Feb. 13 and have lived on the orbiting lab since. Their return will begin once their replacements arrive and complete a short handover — a routine that has become dependable thanks to the steady rhythm of Dragon flights that has won SpaceX still more NASA business.
A mission measured in spacewalks
Crew-12 leaves behind an unusually busy record outside the hatch. Meir performed four spacewalks during this stint, bringing her career total to seven, and described riding the station's Canadarm during her most recent excursion as a "full circle" moment after helping repair the arm earlier in the mission. Fedyaev, meanwhile, used the European Robotic Arm to move two cosmonauts between modules simultaneously — a first — while Adenot notched her first spaceflight with two EVAs of her own, including the removal of a failed antenna on the station's truss.
Science that could pay off on Earth
The crew's work inside the station may prove just as consequential. Hathaway helped upgrade the Cold Atom Lab, which supports quantum-mechanics experiments, while Meir ran investigations in the Life Sciences Glovebox involving neocartilage and stem cells. Early results suggest stem cells divide longer and more continuously in microgravity than on Earth — a finding that, if it scales cost-effectively, could one day feed targeted therapies back on the ground.
Dragon stands ready
The exact return date is still being finalized as NASA times the launch of the replacement Crew-13 mission, now targeted for no earlier than early October after teams took extra time for preflight checks. As is standard, Crew-12 will stay aboard through a brief overlap once their successors are safely docked, then undock aboard the same Crew Dragon that carried them up, splashing down off the California coast under parachutes.
For SpaceX, the homecoming is another data point in a human-spaceflight program that has quietly become the backbone of Western access to low Earth orbit, even as the company pushes Starship toward its first orbital flight. Meir summed up the mixed emotions of any returning crew, telling reporters she is "so looking forward to seeing nature again" while admitting she will "very, very much miss being weightless all the time and the incredible views." A fuller account of the crew's reflections was shared in a Space.com briefing from orbit. Soon, that view will be one they see out an airplane window instead.
