[AS] Rembering America's Oceanic Returns from Space

[Orionid]

Source: https://www.americaspace.com/2020/07/31/landing-in-the-drink-remembering-americas-oceanic-returns-from-space-part-1/

Landing in The Drink: Remembering America's Oceanic Returns from Space (Part 1)
By Ben Evans, on July 31st, 2020


Crew Dragon prototype recovered just offshore of its launch site. Photo Credit: Mike Killian / AmericaSpace

On Sunday afternoon, if weather permits, America will execute its first landing of astronauts in the ocean for almost five decades. Dragon Endeavour crewmen Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken—who launched to the International Space Station (ISS) on 30 May—are due to undock from the sprawling orbital outpost late tomorrow and hit the waters of the Atlantic Ocean mid-afternoon EDT on Sunday, 2 August. Not since the harrowing return of Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) crewmen Tom Stafford, Vance Brand and Deke Slayton on 24 July 1975 have U.S. astronauts returned to an oceanic landing; all others alighted on terra firma in the now-retired Space Shuttle or aboard Russia’s Soyuz. Hurley and Behnken will be the 32nd American crew to land in “the drink”, and looking back on those astronauts of yesteryear offers a sobering reminder of the immense hazards involved.



Video Credit: NASA, via YouTube/NasaHD

Between the suborbital “hop” of Freedom 7 pilot Al Shepard—America’s first man in space—on 5 May 1961 and the return of the ASTP crew, a total of 43 U.S. astronauts have returned to oceanic landings, with Jim Lovell, Pete Conrad, Tom Stafford and John Young having done so four times. Their splashdowns have run the gamut from picture-perfect normality, right-on-the-money and close to the recovery ship, to emergency landings far from rescue. One astronaut lost his spacecraft entirely, another crew hit the ocean harder than intended after a failed parachute deployment and the men of ASTP were almost asphyxiated by lethal nitrogen tetroxide. Astronauts have hit calm waters and choppy waters in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and whether Navy, Air Force, Marines or civilian, many have gone on to lose their breakfast in the process, including the remnants of a smuggled corned-beef sandwich.


Al Shepard is hoisted aboard the helicopter, deftly piloted by Wayne Koons, after completing his 15-minute suborbital flight. The patch of fluorescent green marker dye in the water around Freedom 7 is particularly obvious. Photo Credit: NASA

Al Shepard, America’s first man in space, enjoyed a smooth return to the Atlantic after a 15-minute suborbital mission. Parachute deployment during his descent afforded “a reassuring kick in the butt” and the naval aviator described the splashdown itself as no worse than the shove he experienced from the catapult aboard aircraft carriers. Freedom 7 listed over onto its side slightly, but quickly righted itself, and one of the five Marine Air Group 26 rescue helicopters soon snagged it with hook and line. Shepard himself was raised to the helicopter by a padded harness, but was under no illusions as to the danger. A day earlier, on 4 May, fellow aviators Malcolm Ross and Victor Prather had ridden the Navy’s Stratolab high-altitude gondola to 21.5 miles (34.6 km). They returned safely to the ocean, but Prather slipped from the ladder to the waiting helicopter and drowned.


This was one of the final views of Liberty Bell 7 on 21 July 1961, before it was lost beneath the waves of the Atlantic Ocean. Not until 1999, more than three decades after Grissom’s death, would the sunken capsule be returned to the surface. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

The next American to return from space, Gus Grissom, came close to drowning on 21 July 1961 after splashing down in the Mercury capsule he had dubbed “Liberty Bell 7”. He described the impact as “a good bump” and began disconnecting his oxygen inlet hose, unfastening his helmet and releasing his straps. Luckily, he secured the rubberized neck dam to keep out seawater. It was a decision which would help save Grissom’s life. As he awaited the helicopter to pick up Liberty Bell 7, he suddenly heard the “dull thud” as the hatch inadvertently blew out. He looked up to see blue sky and seawater spilling over the capsule’s hatch sill. Although conditions that day were calm, Mercury capsules were not renowned for their seaworthiness and Liberty Bell 7 quickly started to flood.


The heroic efforts of the helicopter crew to recover Liberty Bell 7 and their close proximity to the water is amply illustrated in this view. Photo Credit: NASA

Grissom jumped out of the capsule and begin to swim furiously, but the helicopter crew was momentarily unaware that he was in danger of drowning. At length, as Liberty Bell 7 filled with seawater, reaching a weight in excess of 4,500 pounds (2,000 kg), it became impossible to hoist the capsule to safety and it sank 17,700 feet (5,400 meters) to the Atlantic floor. Not until 2000 was it finally recovered. Grissom did not know that the helicopter crew was struggling with lifting the capsule and, conversely, their training assured that the Mercury pressure suits floated pretty well. Eventually, when he was recovered, Grissom’s first words were a request for a handkerchief to blow his nose, as his head was filled with seawater. Subsequent inquiries found that Grissom played no part in accidentally blowing the hatch, although unpleasant allegations endured for the rest of his life.


Gus Grissom eats breakfast aboard the USS Randolph, after the flight. Until the end of his life, he would vigorously deny having caused the explosive detonation of Liberty Bell 7’s hatch. Photo Credit: NASA

On 20 February 1962, America’s first man to orbit Earth—Friendship 7 pilot John Glenn—returned from he jokingly described as “just a normal day in space”. His splashdown had, in fact, been anything but normal, following concerns that his heat shield might be loose. As circumstances transpired, Glenn survived re-entry and splashed down in the Atlantic. Instantly, his attention was drawn to the gurgling of the water outside, as his capsule listed firstly to the left, then to right, and through Friendship 7’s window (still coated with a smoky film from the perilous re-entry) he could see the destroyer Noa close by, her decks crammed with hundreds of sailors.


John Glenn shows President John F. Kennedy – the man who boldly committed the United States to landing on the Moon – the interior of his Friendship 7 capsule. Photo Credit: NASA

Three months later, on 24 May, Scott Carpenter encountered difficulties almost as soon as he reached orbit. A malfunctioning pitch horizon scanner caused incorrect data to be fed into the automatic control system of his capsule, Aurora 7, which gradually wasted propellant and worsened as the five-hour mission wore on. Shortly before re-entry, it became apparent that the automatic system responsible for controlling retrofire was not working correctly and Carpenter initiated it manually. But he fired the retrorockets three seconds “late”, and coupled with Aurora 7’s nose being canted about 25 degrees off to the right in yaw, produced a significant 250-mile (400 km) overshoot of the predicted recovery zone.


Scott Carpenter, America’s fourth man in space and second to orbit the Earth. Photo Credit: NASA

Carpenter endured “some pretty good oscillations” under his capsule’s main canopy during descent and, following splashdown, had to wait for over an hour before the destroyer John R. Pierce could reach him. During that time, there were some tense news reports that the astronaut had died. As he waited, Carpenter tied his life-raft to the side of Aurora 7 and relaxed, stretching out and idly watching as a large black fish popped its head out of the ocean to visit with him. Aboard the Pierce, CBS journalist Bill Evenson noted that “this bucket of bolts is really rolling now, and what a happy crew we’ve got!”


Although Carpenter’s heartbeat had been clearly heard in Mission Control throughout re-entry, the public at large had no idea if the astronaut had survived his perilous descent. Here, Aurora 7 and Carpenter are readied for winching out of the water. Photo Credit: NASA

As soon as Carpenter boarded the helicopter, his first act was to borrow someone’s pocket knife. He cut an opening in the sock of his pressure suit and let his sweat and seawater drain out, like a river, through the makeshift toe-hole. He was lucky to have returned alive.    


Wally Schirra is extracted from the Sigma 7 capsule on the desk of the destroyer USS Kearsarge, after completing his nine-hour, six-orbit flight. Schirra’s mission was the longest space voyage ever undertaken by an American astronaut at that time. Photo Credit: NASA

The final two splashdowns of Project Mercury—by Wally Schirra in Sigma 7 on 3 October 1962 and Gordo Cooper in Faith 7 on 16 May 1963—were far calmer than their predecessors. In Schirra’s case, his capsule was “steady as a rock” during re-entry and he deployed the drogue and main parachutes manually, before splashing down a mere 4.5 miles (7.2 km) from the recovery ship, Kearsarge. For the first time, an American manned spacecraft had landed in the Pacific Ocean. Seven months later, Cooper, having suffered problems with his ship’s electrical system whilst in orbit, also performed a manual re-entry, before landing smoothly in the Pacific under decidedly overcast skies.


Descending beneath its main parachute, Faith 7 returns safely to Earth on 16 May 1963. Having experienced multiple problems with his spacecraft’s electrical, environmental and attitude control functions, Gordon Cooper returned home as all the Mercury astronauts would have wanted: as a pilot, in full control. Photo Credit: NASA

With Project Mercury concluded, ten manned flights of the two-person Gemini spacecraft were performed between March 1965 and November 1966. The first, Gemini 3, piloted by Gus Grissom and John Young, splashed down near Grand Turk Island after a five-hour flight, with the recovery ship still some distance away from them. Grissom—who had earlier been offered a smuggled corned beef sandwich by Young—refused to open the hatch until Navy swimmers reached them, probably keen not to repeat his Liberty Bell 7 experience. (In fact, he had gone so far as to name Gemini 3 as “Molly Brown”, honoring the unsinkable heroine of the Titanic.) Unfortunately, the astronauts admitted that a Gemini was a lousy boat and a seasick Grissom quickly lost his entire breakfast.


John Young (right) and Gus Grissom (in water) perform emergency egress training, prior to Gemini 3. Photo Credit: NASA, via Joachim Becker/SpaceFacts.de

As well as lost breakfasts, as Gemini flights flew for durations of up to 14 days, their returning crews proved pretty undesirable after splashdown. When Gemini IV landed on 7 June 1965 after four days, Jim McDivitt and Ed White were “pretty darn woolly” and in need of a shower. For his part, White wondered what all the fuss was about. “I thought we smelled fine,” he said later. “It was all those people on the carrier that smelled strange!”


“I thought we smelled fine,” said Ed White (left) of the ‘distinct aroma’ exhibited by himself and Jim McDivitt (center) after four days in space. The crew of the USS Wasp were inclined to disagree. Photo Credit: NASA

Several further Gemini missions landed without incident, but in March 1966 Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott were tasked with a three-day rendezvous, docking and spacewalking flight which was curtailed after just ten hours. An emergency re-entry was put into effect and Gemini VIII splashed down in the backup landing zone in the Pacific, to be recovered by the naval destroyer Leonard F. Mason, based off the coast of Vietnam. The unfortunate Armstrong and Scott succumbed to both space sickness and seasickness as a result, only later expressing regret at not taking Mission Control’s advice to swallow meclizine motion sickness tablets before re-entry. “When Mission Control told us about three-foot-waves,” Scott wrote in his memoir, Two Sides of the Moon, “they had forgotten to mention the 20-foot swells!”


Dave Scott (left) and Neil Armstrong breathe the fresh air of Earth as the hatches of Gemini VIII are opened after splashdown. Photo Credit: NASA

Following the traumatic return of Gemini VIII, the last four Gemini crews splashed down in relatively serene circumstances. In June 1966, Gemini IX-A astronauts Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan hit the water only 2,200 feet (700 meters) from the recovery ship, their only note of concern being a ruptured drinking water line which had spilled its contents into the cabin. In the second part of this article, AmericaSpace will look back at the return of Apollo missions from low-Earth orbit, from lunar distance and from the Skylab space station, which produced some of the hairiest near-misses with disaster ever encountered.

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Source: https://www.americaspace.com/2020/08/01/landing-in-the-drink-remembering-americas-oceanic-returns-from-space-part-2/

Landing in The Drink: Remembering America’s Oceanic Returns from Space (Part 2)
By Ben Evans, on August 1st, 2020


Bearing astronauts Tom Stafford, Vance Brand and Deke Slayton, the command module descends to splashdown on 24 July 1975 following the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP), America’s most recent landing at sea following a manned space mission. Photo Credit: NASA

Tomorrow afternoon, Dragon Endeavour crewmen Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken will wrap up a hugely successful eight-week voyage to the International Space Station (ISS) by becoming the first U.S. astronauts to land in the ocean since the end of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) on 24 July 1975. At the time of writing, the pair are scheduled to undock from the station tonight, with splashdown expected in the Atlantic Ocean around mid-afternoon Sunday. Launched on 30 May atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster, Hurley and Behnken will become the 32nd crew of Americans to return from space in this fashion. All astronauts in the intervening years have landed on terra firma either aboard the now-retired Space Shuttle—as Hurley and Behnken did earlier in their careers—or aboard Russia’s Soyuz. In this second look-back at the history of oceanic landings, AmericaSpace focuses today upon Apollo, whose astronauts returned to Earth faster, hotter and from greater distances than any of their Mercury or Gemini predecessors.



Video Credit: NASA, via YouTube/lunarmodule5

As outlined in yesterday’s AmericaSpace history article, six Mercury missions returned to the waters of the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans between May 1961 and May 1963 and demonstrated the hazards involved, with one astronaut losing his spacecraft and almost drowning and another overshooting his landing point by more than 250 miles (400 km) and leaving an anxious world wondering about his fate. And ten Gemini crews, launched between March 1965 and November 1966, saw astronauts lose a corned-beef-sandwich breakfast, exhibit unpleasantly “unique” aromas after many days in space and endure 20-foot-high (7-meter) oceanic swells.

Between October 1968 and July 1975, a further 15 crews of astronauts plummeted to Earth and splashed down in either the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean to wrap up some of our species’ most spectacular space voyages. Nine of them did so returning from the Moon, three from an Earth-circling space station and one from a joint mission with the Soviet Union. But first among them, on 22 October 1968, was the return of Apollo 7 crewmen Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele and Walt Cunningham after 11 days in orbit. Gusty winds and choppy waves at their splashdown point, just to the south-east of Bermuda, caused the command module to enter an invested orientation, but its flotation bags quickly righted it. Apollo 7 had hit its landing target with near-pinpoint precision, only 2.2 miles (3.5 km) from where it was supposed to be and a mere 8 miles (13 km) from the recovery ship, the aircraft carrier Essex.


The Apollo 8 command module is recovered on 27 December 1968. Photo Credit: NASA

Two months later, on 27 December, Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders returned from the first human voyage to lunar orbit and their re-entry speed was correspondingly more intense at 21,685 mph (34,900 km/h). They splashed down in the pre-dawn darkness of the Pacific after a historic mission, although it was slightly less dignified for the crew, who got themselves drenched with sea-water, thanks to an open vent in the command module. At one point, Anders even wondered if Apollo 8’s hull had cracked. Borman, an Air Force pilot, was seasick as a result and Lovell and Anders showed no mercy. “What do you expect from a West Point ground-pounder?” they joked.

The splashdown of Apollo 9 crewmen Jim McDivitt, Dave Scott and Rusty Schweickart on 13 March 1969, after a ten-day test mission in Earth orbit, occurred within sight of the recovery ship, but offered the astronauts a rough experience at sea. Television cameras aboard the Guadalcanal saw the three men tumbling into inflated rubber life-rafts and the severe oceanic swells—whipped up to a fury by the rotors of the recovery helicopter—caused the cage-like swing meant to haul them to safety to miss its target several times. “When Scott was finally able to hitch a ride after ten misses,” Time reported later, “the cage swung widely back and forth in stomach-churning arcs as it was lifted to the helicopter.” His hapless crewmates were scarcely more fortunate. McDivitt had to seek refuge on Apollo 9’s flotation collar when the wind roared across his life-raft. All three men were safely recovered, but not before earning themselves a thorough soaking and a dizzying spin.


The Apollo 10 command module approaches the ocean on 26 May 1969. Photo Credit: NASA

With an astronaut corps comprising sea-hardened naval veterans, civilians and Air Force pilots, it is little surprise that successive Apollo crews had their own experiences of splashing down in the ocean. Returning from Apollo 11—the first manned lunar landing mission—in July 1969, the command module hit the water like a ton of bricks and swells off the Hawaiian coast quickly dragged it into an inverted position, with Neil Armstrong, Mike Collins and Buzz Aldrin hanging uncomfortably from their harnesses. They inflated airbags on their ship’s nose, which turned them upright, but Air Force pilot Aldrin appears to have suffered the worst in terms of nausea. And Collins lost a bet with Armstrong that their command module would not capsize…

All three returning lunar heroes waited for recovery personnel to reach them, silently willing themselves not to succumb to seasickness. With the recovery ship Hornet only 12 miles (20 km) steaming towards them—carrying President Richard Nixon to welcome them home—the possibility was unthinkable. “It was one thing to land upside down,” Aldrin reflected, years later. “It would be quite another to scramble out of the spacecraft in front of the television cameras, tossing our cookies all over the place!”


The Apollo 11 crew participates in water egress training in May 1969. Photo Credit: NASA

Nine months later, after a traumatic six days in space, the returning crew of Apollo 13 afforded their watching and listening terrestrial audience an added scare as their command module completed its perilous descent back through the atmosphere. Marine Corps helicopters scoured the targeted landing spot in the Pacific, but could see nothing, and it was actually the Apollo Range Instrumentation Aircraft (ARIA)—a modified Boeing EC-135—whose powerful telemetry and tracking gear picked up the rapidly descending spacecraft.

After a week in which almost everything on Apollo 13 had gone wrong, the joy of witnessing the command module’s parachutes opening and Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise splashing safely into the ocean proved a smooth and graceful charm.


The Apollo 14 crew relax in lift rafts after splashdown on 9 February 1971. Photo Credit: NASA

Others were less fortunate. On 7 August 1971, Apollo 15 crewmen Dave Scott, Jim Irwin and Al Worden returned from perhaps the most scientifically spectacular lunar landing mission of the entire program. Unfortunately, one of the command module’s three main parachutes refused to deploy.

“The drogue chutes came out at 25,000 feet,” Irwin remembered in his memoir, To Rule the Night, “and that really slowed us down, just like a drag chute or speed brakes in an airplane. It doesn’t jerk you, it brakes you. Then you start oscillating wildly underneath the drogues. Just before you get to 10,000 feet, the drogues are released. You can see up there; you see them go, and then you feel them go. You free-fall for a few seconds, wondering whether the main chutes are going to come out. At 10,000 feet, the main chutes are out and they slow you almost completely.”

But not quite.


Hanging beneath only two fully-opened parachutes, the Apollo 15 command module approaches the ocean on 7 August 1971. Photo Credit: NASA

“We saw three chutes; then we saw that one had failed,” Irwin continued. “Well, Al saw it, and I saw it, and at the same time the helicopter crews that we couldn’t see told us we had lost a chute.” Ironically, “rookie” astronauts Worden and Irwin considered the splashdown completely nominal, although Scott—who had done this before on Apollo 9—felt it was decidedly rougher the second time around. It later became apparent that the failure of one of Apollo 15’s parachutes to open was due to a dump of monomethyl hydrazine from the Reaction Control System (RCS).

“Tests have shown that MMH being dumped through a hot engine,” the investigation report noted in September 1971, “can result in tongues of flame from the thrusters, which could affect parachute lines.” Getting rid of this highly volatile fuel before splashdown had been done on previous missions, to prevent, in Worden’s words, the hairy possibility of turning themselves into “a nice bonfire” if the lines ruptured. NASA elected to eliminate the MMH dump from future missions.


The Skylab 2 command module is winched aboard the recovery ship, Ticonderoga, in June 1973. Photo Credit: NASA

Worden added that Apollo 15 landed on a calm day, which actually exacerbated their problems. “As we released this [fuel],” he recounted, “it went right up into that chute and the chute just dissolved. I think it was probably the first time that it happened in the programme, because I think on every other flight there had been some surface wind that [moved] the spacecraft [during descent]. When they [vented the] rocket fuel, it went off in back of them and they never had a problem. It just got lost in the wind, but with us, coming straight down, this stuff went straight up into the parachute…and there we had a problem. It probably would have gotten into the second chute if we’d been much longer…”

Two years later, the returning crews from the three Skylab space station missions did so after far longer durations in orbit. And Skylab’s first commander, Charles “Pete” Conrad—one of only four astronauts, together with Jim Lovell, Tom Stafford and John Young—to have completed four splashdowns in his career, was adamant that his all-Navy crew of Joe Kerwin and Paul Weitz would walk out of their ship. There would be no “carrying us out on stretchers”, he cautioned.


Impressive view of parachute deployment, as seen from the Skylab 3 command module during its descent to Earth in September 1973. Photo Credit: NASA

But after their command module hit the water, physician Kerwin advised them to take some fluids and, without further ado, he knocked back some strawberry juice…and quickly made himself seasick. “I should have chug-a-lugged the damn drink with breakfast that morning instead,” he said later, “but I had it on the gently bobbing command module and…I didn’t feel very good!”

The unspoken fear of splashing down in an inverted, “Stable-2” configuration, hanging upside down from their harnesses, also befell the second Skylab crew of Jack Lousma, Owen Garriott and Al Bean upon their return to Earth in September 1973. “Hanging from the ceiling in 1 G was uncomfortable, after two months of weightlessness,” Lousma said later. “The [command module] is not a good boat, either, especially upside down!”


The Apollo command module is surrounded by recovery forces in the minutes after splashdown in July 1975. This was the most recent landing of U.S. astronauts at sea. Photo Credit: NASA

America’s most recent oceanic landing before tomorrow’s return of Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken came on 24 July 1975, when Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) crewmen Tom Stafford, Vance Brand and Deke Slayton from a nine-day joint mission with the Soviet Union. But their return to Earth that day went badly wrong. One of Stafford’s tasks was to deactivate the RCS thrusters at an altitude of 15 miles (25 km), after which the parachutes would open, followed by a vent valve to admit fresh air into the cabin.

Neither Stafford or Brand could be entirely sure who did what, but a dynamic re-entry and an irritating squeal in their headsets distracted them. “The noise made it impossible for us to hear each other or Houston,” Stafford wrote in his memoir, We Have Capture. “In order to be heard in the cockpit, we had to shout. Either the noise kept Vance and Deke from hearing me or I was too distracted to give the command.”



Video Credit: Science Channel/YouTube

The drogue deployed as planned and the vent valve duly opened, but the RCS thrusters continued to sputter. As a consequence, the open valve admitted not fresh air…but a noxious amount of nitrogen tetroxide. As soon as Stafford saw the yellowish-brown mist and smelled its pungent acridity, he knew what it was. And all three of them knew that four hundred parts per million of this stuff could kill them. Quickly, Stafford shut off the RCS valves, cutting the fuel supply, but the damage was already done, as fumes set to work irritating the astronauts’ eyes, burning their faces and searing their noses, mouths and throats. All three men started hacking and choking.

Splashdown was “a real bone-cruncher”, according to Stafford, and as if matters could not get worse, the command module quickly adopted the upside-down “Stable-2” configuration. Brand’s couch was closest to the vent valve and, unsurprisingly, he passed out. Slayton was nauseous and it was Stafford who grabbed oxygen masks and fitted them to his crewmates. “I knew that I had a toxic hypoxia,” he remembered later, “and I started to grunt-breathe to make sure I got pressure in my lungs to keep my head clear.”


Crew-1 astronauts (from left) Shannon Walker, Victor Glover, Mike Hopkins and Soichi Noguchi participate in emergency water egress training for their upcoming Crew Dragon mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Photo Credit: Soichi Noguchi/Twitter

Finally, Stafford fully opened the vent valve and, with a sudden rush of fresh air, the remaining fumes of nitrogen tetroxide dissipated. Not until they were aboard the recovery ship New Orleans and speaking to President Gerald Ford on the telephone did they inadvertently relate what had happened. And as soon as chief flight surgeon Arnauld Nicogossian learned about the nitrogen tetroxide, he had all three astronauts immediately whisked to the medical bay. “The next day,” Stafford wrote, “we saw X-rays and our lungs, where they were completely clear before and right after landing, the next day they were all white!” The last U.S. crew to splash down ended up getting hospitalized for two weeks at the Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu.

It was found that each man had inhaled three hundred parts per million of nitrogen tetroxide. Had Stafford not reacted quickly with the oxygen masks, they would have been dead within minutes.


Crew-1 astronauts (from left) Soichi Noguchi, Shannon Walker, Victor Glover and Mike Hopkins participate in emergency water egress training. The quartet will launch aboard Crew Dragon for its first Post-Certification Mission (PCM) no earlier than late September. Photo Credit: Soichi Noguchi/Twitter

With American astronauts returning to runway landings aboard the Space Shuttle between April 1981 and July 2011, and aboard Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft since May 2003, tomorrow’s return of Hurley and Behnken will be the first oceanic splashdown by American astronauts in just over 45 years.

It is expected to be the first of many, with the next Crew Dragon astronauts—NASA’s Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, together with Soichi Noguchi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)—slated to begin their multi-month tour of the ISS as soon as late September. In images recently tweeted by Noguchi, they recently completed water-survival training for their return to Earth early next year. “SpaceX and Crew-1 completed water egress training at Cape Canaveral this week,” he tweeted. “Splashdown is no problem.”