Spokane astronaut Anne McClain, Crew-10 safely splashdown on 'greatest planet in the solar system'
McClain, a U.S Army Colonel and commander of NASA's SpaceX Crew-10 mission, splashed down off the coast of San Diego, California, Saturday morning at 8:33 a.m. Pacific Time alongside her team of space travelers.
The crew's arrival back on Earth marks the end of a 148-day round-trip, with all but two of those days spent aboard the International Space Station conducting groundbreaking research, maintenance and educational downlinks, much like the one McClain held with Spokane students at her Alma Mater Gonzaga Preparatory School in May.
On Tuesday, the members of Crew-10 each took a moment to reflect on their time in microgravity at a changing of the guard ceremony with Crew-11, who arrived last week. The predominant theme was gratitude: for the experience with one another, the support of those on Earth and, as McClain put it, "to represent humanity."
"All of us are keenly aware that we may never get to do this again," McClain said. "We've been very pensive over the last few days, understanding what we have all got to be a part of. And we know that there's some tumultuous times on Earth. ... We want this mission, our mission, to be a reminder of what people can do when we work together, when we explore together."
Returning with McClain were NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers, Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov and astronaut Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Roscosmos is the Russian space agency.
The world may seem different then when she left it, but their mission was only a "short snapshot" of a decades-long international collaboration for the betterment of humanity, McClain said. In November, the International Space Station will mark 25 years of being continually staffed with human crews.
"I truly believe that this is one of the biggest feats of cooperation that humans have ever accomplished. It takes people from every country, all around the world, every single day, showing up to support this mission, to make it happen."
McClain said the crew will be returning to Earth at a time when the geopolitical landscape is not unlike that of 40 years ago, when the idea of the International Space Station first arose amid high political tensions between global powers.
"There's a lot of people that would say 'That's not going to be possible,'" McClain said. "But all it took was visionaries from all around the world to work together, to have a mustard seed of faith that something like this could be done when we work together."
McClain and company landed in the Pacific Ocean Saturday aboard the SpaceX Dragon capsule that ferried them to the station, called Endurance. The trip took more than 17 hours after undocking from the ISS while roughly 260 miles above Jakarta, Indonesia.
The completely autonomous return flight started at an orbiting speed of around 17,500 mph before eventually being slowed by the Endurance's thrusters in a roughly 18-minute deorbit burn, which allowed the craft to drop into the Earth's atmosphere and cut the flight speed by 100 yards per second. Temperatures around the craft reached as high as 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit due to the friction generated as the Endurance pushed and rubbed against the air around it, super heating the molecules into a plasma.
A series of parachutes were deployed after the pod reached an altitude of about 18,000 feet, followed by a deployment of four larger chutes at around 6,500 feet from the Earth's surface. Contact with the Endurance cut out for approximately 7 minutes during re-entry, which happens due to intense heat and plasma buildup, a NASA spokesperson said. The crew were traveling at a speed of around 16 mph by the time they hit the water, after experiencing gravitational forces as high as 5-G's on the way down.
Laying in wait for Crew-10 was the SpaceX recovery ship dubbed "Shannon," one of two crafts used to recover Dragon capsules from aquatic landing zones. Equipped with a specialized crane, a helipad, medical experts and technical crews, the ship has been used in more than 20 recovery missions since 2019.
Around 9:20 a.m., the space travelers were assisted out of the Endurance as the effects of gravity washed over them for the first time in more than five months. McClain flashed several smiles, while raising her arms triumphantly, as she shakily made her way out.
Crew-10 is the first to land in the Pacific as part of the space agency's commercial crew program, through which NASA partners with various companies for more cost effective human spaceflight.
With their home base in Hawthorne, California, SpaceX has previously recovered capsules in the area three times , including the Axiom 4 mission, a private 20-day space flight to the station and back between June and July. The Axiom 4 crew included retired NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who holds the record for any American with the most days in space at 695.
Whitson was on the astronaut selection committee that selected McClain in 2013, and McClain was on the 2021 selection committee that selected Ayers. McClain commemorated their cosmic reunion with a social media post and a pair of photos on July 10.
"When you reach your goals, send the elevator back down!" McClain wrote.
Now with two space flights under her belt, McClain has spent 352 days in space and participated in three spacewalks for a total of 18 hours and 52 minutes. She may add to that resume in the years to come as a member of the Artemis program, which seeks to return humans to the moon.
But McClain indicated Tuesday that for now, she's just excited to be back on "the greatest planet in the solar system."
"We've checked," she said.
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