Nov. 8 (UPI) — The three NASA astronauts that were part of the SpaceX Crew-8 aboard Crew Dragon Endeavour will speak publicly today for the first time since their mission returned to earth late last month.
Astronauts Michael Barratt, Matthew Dominick, and Jeanette Epps will speak and take questions at a news conference at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, starting at 3:15 p.m. EST, the agency confirmed in a statement.
The news conference will be livestreamed on the agency’s website.
The fourth crewmember, Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, “will not participate because of his travel schedule,” NASA confirmed.
All four were briefly taken to a hospital “out of an abundance of caution,” following the spacecraft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida on Oct. 25.
One crewmember was then kept in hospital overnight “under observation as a precautionary measure.” The space agency did not reveal which of the four astronauts was hospitalized following the mission, which lasted a total of 235 days in space, 232 of those at the International Space Station.
The crew was eventually flown by helicopter to Florida and from there, taken by a NASA plane to Houston.
The Crew-8 astronauts launched into space on March 4 and were expected to remain at the space station for six months to perform various experiments.
Bad weather conditions caused by Hurricane Milton repeatedly delayed their return to Earth. Scheduling conflicts related to Boeing’s Starliner also contributed to the delay.
The Starliner launched in early June but concerns related to the spacecraft’s propulsion system forced officials to return it to Earth uncrewed in September.
The Crew Dragon Endeavour was later reconfigured to provide seating for Starliner astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams as an emergency evacuation option. NASA eventually determined the pair will stay aboard the ISS until February.
The crew traveled more than 100 million miles, and completed 3,760 orbits around Earth over their more than 33 weeks in space.
