Update for 3 a.m. ET on Oct. 13: NASA has waved off the planned Oct. 13 undocking of the Crew-8 mission, citing unfavorable weather conditions in the planned splashdown zone. No new target date has been set; the next weather briefing won't occur until 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) on Oct. 14.
SpaceX's Crew-8 astronauts will have to wait a bit longer to begin their trip home to Earth after plans to depart the International Space Station Sunday morning (Oct. 13) were postponed by bad weather at their splashdown site.
Crew-8's Dragon capsule, named Endeavour, was scheduled to undock from the International Space Station (ISS) at 7:05 a.m. EDT (1105 GMT) on Sunday and splash down off the coast of Florida no earlier than 3:38 p.m. EDT (1938 GMT) on Monday (Oct. 14). That plan was thwarted by poor weather conditions at their splashdown zone.
"Due to unfavorable weather conditions off the coast of Florida, Dragon is standing down from today's undocking from the Space Station," SpaceX wrote in an update on X (formerly Twitter) early Sunday. "Teams will continue to monitor weather conditions for the next available undocking opportunity." You'll be able to watch those milestones live via the NASA+ streaming service, and here at Space.com if, as expected, the agency makes its webcasts available.
Crew-8 consists of NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps and Alexander Grebenkin of Russia's space agency Roscosmos. The quartet launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on March 3 and arrived at the ISS two days later.
Crew-8 was originally supposed to undock on Oct. 7, but Hurricane Milton pushed things back by nearly a week. The powerful storm roiled seas in the mission's potential splashdown zone, so NASA and SpaceX waited for Milton to pass before greenlighting Crew-8's homecoming.
Related: Hurricane Milton bears down on Florida with Category 5 strength in new ISS footage (video)
As its name implies, Crew-8 is the eighth operational, long-duration ISS astronaut mission that SpaceX has flown for NASA. Its successor, Crew-9, arrived at the orbiting lab on Sept. 29.
Crew-8 wasn't the only mission to be affected by Hurricane Milton. For example, NASA and SpaceX had been aiming to launch the agency's $5 billion Europa Clipper mission on Thursday (Oct. 10) but pushed the attempt back to Sunday as Milton bore down on Florida's western coast.
Clipper will launch atop a Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, on Florida's Atlantic coast, no earlier than Monday at 12:06 p.m. EDT (1606 GMT).
Editor's note: This story was updated on Oct. 13 to reflect the undocking delay for SpaceX's Crew-8 astronauts.
Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.
