A little while ago, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endurance spacecraft completed its Crew-10, or SpaceX Crew-10, mission for NASA with a successful splashdown. Aboard were astronauts Anne McClain, Nichole Ayers, and Takuya Onishi, and cosmonaut Kirill Peskov, who had arrived at the International Space Station on March 16, 2025, as part of Expedition 72/73. The Crew-10 members completed SpaceX’s 10th regular crewed mission in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of California. The Crew Dragon had left the Station approximately 17.5 hours earlier.
This is the first crewed mission that is part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program to splash down in the Pacific, while previous missions had ended with splashdowns in the Atlantic Ocean. This change, already implemented for the Dragon cargo spacecraft, aims to prevent debris from the unpressurized section, which is ejected during reentry, from falling onto land.
Shortly after splashdown, SpaceX’s “MV Shannon” ship picked up Endurance and its crew and transported them to shore. Support personnel also used some speedboats for the recovery operations. The astronauts also received their first medical checks aboard the ship.
During this first part of Expedition 73, there was some spacecraft traffic. On April 22, a Dragon cargo spacecraft arrived on the CRS-32 mission, departing on May 23. On June 26, the Crew Dragon Grace spacecraft arrived on the private Ax-4 mission, departing on July 14. A spacewalk took place on May 1, during which astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers spent 5 hours and 44 minutes performing various maintenance tasks and repositioning a communications antenna.
On Tuesday, August 5th, Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi officially handed over command of the International Space Station to Russian cosmonaut Sergey Ryzhikov.
The Crew Dragon Endurance spacecraft has completed its fourth space mission. It will be overhauled, like every spacecraft after each return to Earth. SpaceX continues to fly missions under its contract with NASA, which provides the US with a means of transportation independent of other nations, as well as private missions.
