A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule will return to Earth Friday morning (Feb. 9), wrapping up the private Ax-3 astronaut mission.
Ax-3's Crew Dragon "Freedom" is expected to make a parachute-aided ocean splashdown off the coast of Florida on Friday around 8:30 a.m. EST (1330 GMT), according to NASA.
You can watch the reentry action live via SpaceX's account on X (formerly known as Twitter), or via Axiom Space, the Houston-based company that organized Ax-3.
It's been an incredible, busy and fun-filled two weeks up here," López-AlegrÃa said during a livestreamed departure ceremony aboard the ISS on Friday (Feb. 2). "I am very proud of my Ax-3 crewmates, who helped their agencies achieve all of their science objectives, technology demonstrations, as well as the outreach events."
"It's been a real pleasure and honor to have you onboard the International Space Station," European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen, who commands the station's current Expedition 70 mission, said during the ceremony. "You guys have been great crewmates."
Ax-3 is the sixth spaceflight for López-AlegrÃa. Among his previous missions was Ax-1, which flew to the ISS in April 2022; he is the only person ever to have ridden Dragon to orbit twice.
The other three Ax-3 astronauts had never been to orbit before, though Villadei did reach suborbital space with Virgin Galactic in June 2023.
Freedom undocked from the ISS on Wednesday (Feb. 7) at 9:20 a.m. EST (1420 GMT), ending Ax-3's stay aboard the orbiting lab. That stay was expected to end on Saturday (Feb. 3), but bad weather in the splashdown zone pushed it back four days.