by The SpaceX Crew Dragon ferry carrying four long-term crew members from the International Space Station opened Monday, setting the stage for re-entry and splashdown early Tuesday to complete a 199-day mission.
NASA commander Jasmin MoghbeliEuropean Space Agency astronaut Andreas MogensenJapanese sheet Satoshi Furukawa and a Russian cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov separated from the upper port of the Harmony module on the station’s face at 11:20 a.m. EDT as the two spacecraft launched 265 miles over the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.
“I’m very sad to be leaving the station, but I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone,” said Moghbeli, a Marine combat helicopter pilot, on Sunday. “You know, we have a few people on board, but there is a whole international team on the ground around the world that makes this possible.
“To our friends and families, they bear the burden of what we do here, leaving for half a year. So, thank you to everyone.”
The Crew Dragon was expected to follow a fiery trajectory from north-to-southeast across the American heartland, splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida, at 5:50 am on Tuesday. SpaceX recovery teams were deployed to the splash zone to await the arrival of Crew Dragon Endurance. Good weather was expected.
It was launched last August 26 from the Kennedy Space Center, the Moghbeli crew will have completed 3,184 orbits and traveled 84.4 million splash miles. In addition to a full range of research, Moghbeli and Soyuz colleagues Loral O’Hara performed a spacewalk last November.
“This is something that I dreamed about since I was a child, and I was afraid that I would get here and that I might be disappointed and that it would not meet my expectations, but the international partnership that we here and the space. The station is incredible. It’s an example of what we can do when we work together,” said Moghbeli.
Borisov agreed that it was a “bittersweet moment” to leave the station.
“We’ve been here for over six months, but time flies very quickly, and it’s time to go back, and it’s a little sad,” he said. “But I’m very happy that we’ve done all the work we planned. The station is working fine, all the experiments are underway and we know we’re handing over to a great team. “
Replacement team 7 – Team 8 Commander Matthew Dominick, co-pilot Michael Barratt, Jeanette Epps and cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin – were launched to the station on March 3, briefly boosting the laboratory’s crew to 11. With the departure of Crew 7, the laboratory is now staffed with four Crew 8 flights with. with Soyuz commander, Oleg Kononenko, cosmonaut Nikolai Chub and NASA’s O’Hara.
Launched last September aboard the Soyuz MS-24/70S shuttle, Kononenko and Chub are halfway through a one-year mission, and will need a fresh Soyuz for the return trip to Earth next September.
On March 21, the Soyuz MS-25/71S spacecraft will be delivered to the space station by cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, guest Belarusian cosmonaut Marina Vasilevskaya and NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson. Novitskiy, Vasilevskaya and O’Hara will return to Earth on April 2 using the same Soyuz that carried Kononenko, Chub and O’Hara to the station last year.
Kononenko, Chub and Dyson will use the Soyuz delivered by Novitskiy for their trip home in September.
During a change of command ceremony on Sunday, outgoing Expedition 70 commander Mogensen turned the station over to Kononenko. On April 2, when Novitskiy, Vasilevskaya and O’Hara depart, Expedition 71 will begin.
“We wish you all the best,” Moghbeli told the station crew as Crew 7 departed. “For those who remain on board Expedition 71, we hope (it is) filled with laughter and science as we were. Loral, we will see you in a few weeks. And we left you some peanut butter and tortillas in Node One.”
“Congratulations on the event,” O’Hara replied. “I miss you guys already, and thank you for that very generous gift! … Enjoy the last few hours in orbit and soft land. I can’t wait to see you in in a few weeks.”
Kononenko now holds the record for the most cumulative time spent in space over his four missions, moving past the previous record holder earlier this year.
“On my first mission in 2015, I had the pleasure of flying with Gennady Padalka, who set the (multilight endurance) record for 878 days in space,” Mogensen said during the change of command ceremony.
“You have now overcome that,” he told Kononenko, “and you are on your way to achieving a thousand days in space, which is an incredible achievement. There is no one more experienced than you when it comes to the International. Space Station. So I guess I’ll leave it in the best possible hands.”
Kononenko will reach the 1,000 day mark on June 4. By the time he returns to Earth, he will have spent more than three years in space.
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