Atlantis

I think the most "unexpected" journey we've undertaken on the Endeavour was the splashdown of Albireo 6!

The Albireo missions were some of our first attempts to dock two spacecraft in orbit. They usually consisted of two spacecraft: an Andro spacecraft, with two to three cosmonauts inside, and an Almach, which was pretty much just a target spacecraft. There was no one on the Almach; it was operated from the ground.

So for Albireo 6, three cosmonauts had launched onboard the Andro 6 spacecraft to perform some experiments. Their docking target, the passengerless Almach stage, was launched a few days later due to intense lightning storms out at the Gagarin launchpad. The cosmonauts did their thing--practiced docking with a successful dock, did some more experiments, even did a couple of EVAs--and eventually their mission came to a close. Then it was time for them to deorbit and return to Sonrieth.

The Andro module was designed for a water landing, so when they came over the ocean, everything was going pretty much alright. We and the Vandenberg were both tracking the spacecraft. But as it turns out, someone had miscalculated their orbit entirely wrong. They entered the atmosphere hundreds of kilometers downrange. Their recovery ship would be unable to get to the landing zone fast enough, and guess what ship was closest to the landing site? It was us, the Endeavour!

During those last few minutes, we got a text directive from BMC that we would be operating as the recovery ship for the landing zone. They sent over some directions for recovery, but we only had a few minutes to prepare. When the module splashed down, we quickly sent out lifeboats and recovered the crew. Unfortunately, the spacecraft got waterlogged, and was eventually lost to the sea.

After Albireo 6, they redid the directives for the tracking and recovery ships. They made sure there were people trained for both jobs on both ships in the case of an emergency or some other situation where the wrong ship might be in the right position.

Other than the ship mishap, Albireo 6 was a wildly successful mission. Even though we lost the craft, the crewmembers got recognition from HQ for their last-minute recovery work that ended up successful. Without them, the cosmonauts would likely have been lost to the sea. Thanks to those wonderful dragons, the crew of Alberio 6 returned home alive, if a little wet!

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[Author's note: I'm pretty sure they would have noticed the orbit miscalculation before that, but I have to go to class and I don't have time to rewrite this to be accurate AND exciting.]