Historic American Space Launch Astronauts Returning This Afternoon

After two months at the International Space Station, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, the first two American astronauts to launch from U.S. territory in nine years, are returning to Earth this afternoon, reentry in the atmosphere to commence at 1:51 and splashdown at 2:48, somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida panhandle coast around Pensacola and Panama City.  They successfully launched from Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral on May 31 and will be in the same Crew Dragon capsule when they return...a joint team from SpaceX corporation and NASA will pick them up from the ocean...the rescue process should take about an hour and then they'll be flown to Houston.  I'm about to watch the TV coverage of it all...I was going to mow the lawn but one of the northern bands of Tropical Storm Isaias, which is creeping up the Florida east coast (and which caused the proposed splashdown site to switch to the Gulf from the Atlantic), just swept through us with rainfall...think I'll just stay indoors and watch the tube.  C-Span is covering it all live although I imagine the other cable news channels will break from their typical news stories to temporarily feature it as well.  I was happy two months ago with the successful launch, but a mission isn't truly a success until the astronauts are back at home, safe and sound...well, I might have to qualify that in this pandemic era...