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Hurricane Milton is viewed in the Gulf of Mexico from the International Space Station.
HOUSTON—NASA has again delayed the departure of the four-person SpaceX Crew-8 Dragon capsule from the International Space Station (ISS) due to Hurricane Milton, which is forecast to make landfall near Tampa Bay, Florida, by early Oct. 10 and move across Central Florida.
Departure of the SpaceX Crew-8 Dragon capsule from the ISS with NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Mike Barratt and Jeanette Epps and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin was shifted to no earlier than Oct. 13 at 3:05 a.m. EDT. NASA made the decision on Oct. 7.
Departure of the Crew-8 Dragon from the ISS, which launched on March 3, had initially been planned for no earlier than Oct. 7. Due to weather concerns, it was then moved to no earlier than Oct. 10 at 3:15 a.m. EDT, prior to the most recent delay. Another weather assessment will be made on Oct. 11, NASA’s latest status update says.
NASA monitors weather conditions for parachute-assisted splashdown and SpaceX-led recovery operations of ISS crews at seven sites in the waters off the Florida peninsula. They are the Atlantic waters off Jacksonville, Daytona Beach and Cape Canaveral and the Gulf of Mexico waters off Tampa Bay, Panama City, Pensacola and Tallahassee.
The Crew-8 return is to mark the end of the ISS Expedition 71/72 crew exchange that began with the launch of Russia’s Soyuz MS-26 on Sept. 11 with NASA astronaut Don Pettit and cosmonauts Aleksey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner.
They were joined by NASA’s Space X-contracted Crew-9 launch and docking of NASA astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov over Sept. 28-29.
The Crew-9 mission was reduced from four to two fliers to provide NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams with transportation back to Earth in February after NASA’s decision to deorbit their extended mission Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft back to Earth uncrewed late Sept. 6. The decision was based on multiple Starliner propulsion system concerns that surfaced after Wilmore and Williams launched on their Crew Flight Test mission on June 5.
Williams is currently serving as the seven-person ISS Expedition 72 commander.
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