NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 Heads Home Today — Splashdown Off California Thursday Morning

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2026 — KYIV — Russia launched one of the heaviest combined missile-and-drone barrages of the war overnight into Wednesday, striking Kyiv and cities across Ukraine and killing at least eight people, according to the Associated Press. Moscow itself confirmed the assault: Russia’s defense ministry said it carried out a “massive strike” on targets in Kyiv and other regions, claiming it hit port facilities in the Odesa region and sea vessels used by Ukrainian forces. The barrage came just hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy publicly warned on X that Russia was preparing a major strike.

02 A Night of Explosions Across the Country

Four astronauts are coming home today. NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 is scheduled to undock from the International Space Station at 8:05 a.m. Eastern — that’s 5:05 in the morning Pacific — bringing down the curtain on 237 days in orbit. If the morning goes to plan, their SpaceX Dragon capsule will splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast at about 11:34 a.m. Eastern on Thursday, 8:34 a.m. for West Coast viewers, closing out one of the longer recent station rotations.

The schedule, published by NASA in a media advisory, is built for early risers on both coasts. NASA’s live coverage begins at 6 a.m. Eastern (3 a.m. Pacific) as the four crew members board Dragon and close the hatch around 6:20. Undocking coverage picks up at 7:45 a.m. Eastern, with the physical separation from the station’s Harmony module set for 8:05. After that, NASA switches to audio-only communications while Dragon spends just over a day catching the right line home.

Thursday is the payoff. Return coverage resumes at 10:20 a.m. Eastern, the deorbit burn — the braking maneuver that commits the capsule to reentry — is targeted for 10:46, and splashdown follows at about 11:34. NASA plans a briefing at 1:15 p.m. Eastern with Bill Spetch of NASA’s Low Earth Orbit Program, deputy chief scientist Dr. Liz Warren, and SpaceX’s Lee Echerd to wrap up the mission and preview the next cargo flight. You can watch it all on the free NASA+ app, plus Amazon Prime, Discovery+ and YouTube; SpaceX runs its own livestream on its website and on X.

The crew flying home is a genuinely international lineup. NASA astronaut Jessica Meir commands the mission, with fellow NASA astronaut Jack Hathaway as pilot. Riding with them are mission specialists Sophie Adenot of the European Space Agency and Andrey Fedyaev of Roscosmos. They launched together on February 13 from Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40, and they have lived and worked aboard the station ever since — part of Expedition 75, running experiments and keeping the orbital outpost humming.

The handoff is already done. On October 4, Meir passed command of the station to Roscosmos cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov in the traditional change-of-command ceremony. Their replacements — NASA’s SpaceX Crew-13 — arrived on October 1: NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins (commander) and Luke Delaney (pilot), Canadian Space Agency astronaut Josh Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov. They’ll live and work aboard the station into spring 2027. Once Crew-12 departs, seven people remain on orbit to continue the research and station upkeep.

Coming home from a long-duration flight is a production in itself. Over the past couple of weeks the crew packed Dragon with personal items, cargo and scientific samples headed back to Earth. Before reentry they’ll do what every returning crew does: fluid loading — drink bags mixed with salt tablets — to help their bodies handle gravity again after more than seven months of weightlessness. It’s a small, unglamorous ritual, and it matters; the first hours back on solid ground are famously rough on long-duration flyers.

One detail worth knowing if you’re setting an alarm: every time on NASA’s schedule is Eastern and explicitly subject to change. Undocking depends on spacecraft readiness, recovery-team readiness and weather in the Pacific recovery zone off California. NASA already moved the undocking once — from 1:05 a.m. to 8:05 a.m. Eastern — when it published the return schedule on October 5. If the Pacific doesn’t cooperate, the whole timeline slides.

The California splashdown is part of a bigger shift. In early 2025, NASA and SpaceX moved crew recovery operations from Florida to the West Coast, and the Pacific has been the landing zone since. The most recent example was a historic one: the four astronauts who looped the moon on Artemis II in April splashed down off San Diego. For Southern California, Thursday morning’s homecoming is another reminder that the West Coast is now where America’s astronauts come back to Earth — not far from where SpaceX keeps launching from Vandenberg.

It’s easy to treat crew rotations as routine — NASA and SpaceX have the rhythm down — but 237 days is a long time to live in a tin can traveling 17,500 miles an hour. Meir, Hathaway, Adenot and Fedyaev spent the better part of a year doing science that can’t be done anywhere else, including advanced health research that NASA says benefits medicine on the ground as much as future deep-space missions. Thursday morning, they trade all of that for a parachute ride into the Pacific and solid ground under their feet. After seven months, that first breath of sea air has to taste pretty good.

Previously will update this story with the undocking and splashdown as they happen. In the meantime, the business of getting to orbit keeps humming right along.