NASA Sets Briefing Ahead Of Crew-12 Station Return
NASA has scheduled a news conference with the four members of its SpaceX Crew-12 mission as they near the end of their stay aboard the International Space Station. The briefing, set for 2:45 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, Sept. 16, will be broadcast live from orbit and is intended to give reporters a chance to ask the astronauts about their work in space and their upcoming journey home.
The crew includes NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. The four launched together aboard a SpaceX spacecraft from Kennedy Space Center in Florida in February 2026 and joined the station’s Expedition 74/75 crew shortly after arrival. Journalists interested in submitting questions must register with the newsroom at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston by 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 15, and dial into the call at least 10 minutes before it begins. The event will stream on NASA’s website.
During their time aboard the orbiting laboratory, Crew-12 members supported hundreds of scientific investigations tied to NASA’s broader goals of preparing for long-duration missions beyond low Earth orbit. Their research touched on a range of topics, including studies of pneumonia-causing bacteria aimed at improving cardiovascular treatments, methods for generating intravenous fluids on demand for future missions, and how differences in physical characteristics may influence blood flow during spaceflight. NASA officials say the findings could benefit both future astronauts and patients on Earth.
The crew’s departure will follow the arrival of the next mission, Crew-13, and a short handover period during which the two teams will work together aboard the station. Mission managers will monitor weather conditions near the splashdown zones off the coast of California before clearing the spacecraft for departure, a standard precaution NASA takes to ensure a safe return for crews landing in the Pacific.
The upcoming homecoming is part of a now well-established cadence of crew rotations that has kept the International Space Station continuously staffed for more than a quarter century. Since the outpost’s first long-duration crew arrived in 2000, astronauts and cosmonauts from multiple space agencies have lived and worked aboard it in shifts, conducting research that ranges from medical studies to materials science experiments that cannot be replicated on the ground.
The station has also become a proving ground for the commercial spaceflight industry, with private companies now regularly ferrying crews and cargo to and from orbit under contract with NASA. That partnership model has allowed the agency to focus its own resources on deeper-space ambitions, including the Artemis program’s push to return astronauts to the Moon and eventually send missions to Mars. Data gathered from missions like Crew-12 are expected to inform how future crews cope with the physical demands of longer journeys farther from Earth.
Additional details about the International Space Station, its ongoing research, and its rotating crews are available through NASA’s website, according to information from NASA.
