Crew-13 to the station last week<\/a>, though, they have shown the new crew around their orbiting home and are ready to make their way back to Earth.<\/p>\nUntil then, the station\u2019s population remains at 11, all part of Expedition 75 of the space station, which has been continuously populated since November 2000.<\/p>\n
Command of the station switched hands from Meir on Sunday during a ceremony during which she gave the reins to Roscosmos cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday we\u2019re gathered here together for what is a bittersweet moment,\u201d Meir said. \u201cFor those of us on Crew-12, we will be leaving our friends. We\u2019ll be leaving our temporary home that\u2019s been even a little bit longer than we first planned, but we know that we are going home to our friends, to our families, to all of our team members on the ground.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it\u2019s a lot of mixed, swirling emotions for all of us. When one leaves a home like this up on the space station, especially such a spectacular home that offers these extraordinary views of our home planet.\u201d<\/p>\n
All 11 crowded together for an embrace during the ceremony.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is what we call a space station huggle,\u201d Meir said. \u201cA combination between a hug and a huddle of course. We will miss you guys. We are so excited to see what you will do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meir handed over a symbolic gold key to Dubrov.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a great honor and great responsibility to be a commander of such a magnificent place,\u201d he said, noting it was the 69th anniversary of the Soviet Union\u2019s launch of Sputnik 1. \u201cToday is the dawn of the space era for humanity. The International Space Station, it\u2019s the greatest symbol of what we can do if we work together. It\u2019s the greatest symbol of international cooperation. And to be the commander of this crew, I think it\u2019s the best position in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
The earliest undocking could come at 1:05 a.m. EDT Wednesday, which would allow for a splashdown return off the coast of California more than a day later targeting 11:25 a.m. Thursday.<\/p>\n
Dragon returns to Earth have not been off Florida\u2019s coast since last year starting with Crew-10 as SpaceX shifted to California recoveries over safety concerns of discarded parts of the spacecraft on reentry making their way on land.<\/p>\n
Remaining on the station will be NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Central Florida\u2019s Luke Delaney, who were part of Crew-13, as well as Anil Menon, who flew to the station in July with Russian crewmates on a Soyuz spacecraft.<\/p>\n
Also on board are Crew 13\u2019s Joshua Kutryk of the Canadian Space Agency and Roscosmos\u2019 Sergey Teteryatnikov. Menon\u2019s crewmates also remaining on board until next spring are Anna Kikina and Dubrov.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With nearly eight months in space under their belt, the four members of Crew-12 are set to depart…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[558,114,115,139,141,140,554,109,76686,1769],"class_list":["post-420059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-business","tag-latest-headlines","tag-news","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-science","tag-social","tag-social-business","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}