Heading Home: NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 Concludes Station Science Mission

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 mission is ending, with NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev scheduled to return from the International Space Station in early October. They supported research that benefits life on Earth and prepares humans for deep-space missions, using the station’s unique vantage point and microgravity to study everything from how cells behave to how materials take shape.

Hathaway worked with hardware for crystal-growth experiments; microgravity reveals new details about crystal structures, and cancer-targeting treatments were crystallized to better understand their properties and help advance cancer therapies on Earth through the Pharmaceutical In-space Laboratory (ADSEP-PIL-15). Meir worked with cables that deliver light used to cool, trap, and study atoms inside the Cold Atom Lab, where ultracold atoms can be observed for longer periods in microgravity. A recent upgrade to the facility increases the number of atoms produced, providing more data to advance quantum technologies such as solar cells and the components that power cell phones and computers.

Adenot held a small container housing a bone scaffold made from wood, designed to mimic the structure of real bones and support the growth of bone cells. Since microgravity can accelerate bone loss, it offers a unique opportunity to test how well the scaffold promotes bone regeneration; insights could protect future space explorers and provide new treatment options for osteoporosis, which affects more than 200 million people globally. Meir also set up hardware for an investigation that studies soft materials made from tiny particles suspended in water. In microgravity, scientists can study how these particles interact and assemble into structures differently than they do on Earth, potentially helping fine-tune the texture, stability, and performance of materials used for growing plants, 3D printing, and producing pharmaceuticals. Hathaway held equipment to test for antibiotic-resistant bacteria aboard the space station, since some bacteria can withstand antibiotics, starvation, and disinfection, making them a concern in closed environments like spacecraft.