SpaceX and the Coast Guard work together to try to keep civilian boaters away from returning spacecraft after astronauts splash down in the water. But on Tuesday night, they could not do anything about a pod of curious dolphins.
A handful of the marine mammals swam up to a recovery boat that was set to lift the Crew Dragon Freedom to its deck and surfaced from the clear blue waters.
“Wow, we got a cute little pod of dolphins, it wasn’t just one or two,” said Kate Tice, an engineering manager at SpaceX who was commentating on the company’s video stream. As the dolphins’ dorsal fins bobbed, she said that the team working on retrieving the capsule was “getting quick assists from the honorary part of the recovery team, those dolphins.”
Dolphins are generally social and playful marine mammals and often travel in groups, or pods. The most common species near Florida’s Gulf Coast are bottle-nosed dolphins, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, although it was not clear which species was circling the SpaceX crews on Tuesday.
Todd Speakman, a field biologist with the National Marine Mammal Foundation, said while he couldn’t definitively identify the dolphin species, he said it was likely a stenella dolphin, which are often found near the Gulf Coast.
He said he wasn’t surprised that the pod approached the capsule shortly after splashdown.
“With there being that much activity, they’re just curious animals, so they’re going to come check it out,” Mr. Speakman said, adding that dolphins will often swim around their research ships.
It’s not the first time wildlife have visited astronauts just after they returned to Earth. In 2021, photographers captured a lone dolphin swimming near the recovery boats headed to pick up the Dragon spacecraft used for SpaceX’s Crew-1 mission. But an Orlando news station reported that the animal didn’t stick around for the capsule’s splashdown.