First astronaut splashdown in 45 years is set for today

Some cool stuff for this Sunday.

LINK

"Two very special mementos will splash down on Earth with astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley who, if schedules hold, will return home Sunday after two months in space.

The Crew Dragon capsule undocked from the International Space Station on time Saturday at 7:35 p.m., and the astronauts will begin their 19-hour trip back to Earth. NASA set splashdown for 2:48 p.m. off the coast of Pensacola in the Gulf of Mexico, far from the projected path of Tropical Storm Isaias that?s forecast to travel up Florida?s east coast. The coast near Panama City is the alternative site."

Cool!
That should be around 12:45 MDT for us here.
I have a link to NASA's public broadcast running in the background.

Live youtube link below

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSJIQftoxeU

This is just amazing to me. Thrilled to be able to watch it all. Way to go Bob & Doug and all of SpaceX.

I know it just can't be me - Bob & Doug most excellent trip ever

watched a life stream of it - cool

They've returned to a "gravity rich environment" so they'll have assistance getting out. Personally, I like living in a "gravity rich environment". I don't know why that sounded funny to me.

Watched it live. Pretty cool. Will be interesting to see what the deal was with the fumes delaying opening of the hatch once the capsule was on the recovery ship.

I've always been amazed at the accuracy of where they can place the splash down.

A guy I work with used to have a job computing orbits for NASA. Pretty cool stuff.

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Originally Posted by Gman

Watched it live. Pretty cool. Will be interesting to see what the deal was with the fumes delaying opening of the hatch once the capsule was on the recovery ship.

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Yes, I was wondering about that myself - was it just worrying like a mother hen since this was the first IRL landing of a flown Crew Dragon 2?

If not, and the extensive monitoring/decontam is always going to be required, WTH will the crew do if they have to attempt an escape before the recovery vessels have arrived for some reason?

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Originally Posted by Circuits

Yes, I was wondering about that myself - was it just worrying like a mother hen since this was the first IRL landing of a flown Crew Dragon 2?

If not, and the extensive monitoring/decontam is always going to be required, WTH will the crew do if they have to attempt an escape before the recovery vessels have arrived for some reason?

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Speaking of wondering 'what might happen if', I found it unusual how the capsule is loaded on a 'nest' when it's brought onto the ship and then the nest is moved under a covered area where they have a platform to access the hatch.

If there was an emergency and the hatch couldn't be removed for some reason, the roof above eliminates the possibility of egress out of the top hatch. Just seemed to me like they would want to keep their options open.

I think they just have to be cautious of the capsule as it has experienced a really high temperature upon re-entry. So many unknowns involved. The pictures I saw showed the capsule looking scorched. The southern tip of Merritt Island used to have a concrete dragon with a baby dragon and a caveman. Not sure if this is reason SpaceX named the spacecraft Dragon. I lived in that area of the Space Coast for about 14 years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ohp9hPxZQo

After the landing, I was a little surprised that they did not seem to anticipate the number of private boats that showed up.
It looked like the "fast boats" had to break off and get them to back off.

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Originally Posted by BladesNBarrels

After the landing, I was a little surprised that they did not seem to anticipate the number of private boats that showed up.
It looked like the "fast boats" had to break off and get them to back off.

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There were private boats that showed up? I thought those were other fast boats that were gathering the parachutes.

I thought that was pretty funny. One private boat that showed up was flying a Trump flag.