by At the end of a six-month stay at the International Space Station, the one-man, three-man crew returned to Earth early Tuesday, streaking across the American heartland like a flaming meteor as its Crew Dragon capsule went down to the Gulf of Mexico. splash screen.
Suspended under four giant parachutes, the Crew Dragon “Endurance” settled down to a smooth walking speed south of Pensacola, Florida, at 5:47 a.m. EDT, closing out a 199-day mission spanning 3,184 orbits and 84.4 million miles.
SpaceX crew stationed nearby pulled the capsule and its crew — commander Jasmin MoghbeliEuropean Space Agency astronaut Andreas MogensenJapanese sheet Satoshi Furukawa and cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov — on the back deck of the company’s recovery ship Megan and promptly opened the side hatch.
Fifty minutes after splashdown, the astronauts were undressed one by one and placed on stretchers before rolling in for initial medical checks as they begin to readjust to gravity after six and a half months of weightlessness. The sheet extensions were usually returning to the long-term station and all four seemed healthy and well.
The 18-and-a-half-hour journey home began on Monday when Moghbeli and her colleagues in Crew 7 launched from the International Space Station.
Flying 260 miles above the Indian Ocean, the team monitored a 13.5-minute automated thruster firing starting at 4:56 a.m. EDT, slowing the spacecraft by 212 mph and plunging the far side of its orbit deep into the atmosphere. as required for descent. to the Gulf of Mexico.
Re-entering the recognizable atmosphere, the Crew Dragon followed a north-southeast path across the United States, rapidly decelerating in a fireball of superheated air.
Spectators on a path that stretched from Nebraska to central Kansas, northeastern Oklahoma, central Arkansas and Mississippi had the opportunity to see the returning spacecraft as it streaked back to Earth.
After the crossing of the panhandle of Florida, now flying at only a few hundred miles per hour, a small drogue parachute inflated to stabilize the spacecraft followed by the four main slides. The Crew Dragon then descended to a calm splashdown in calm winds and rough seas.
As with all Crew Dragon returns, the crew was expected to be flown to shore by helicopter, boarding a waiting NASA aircraft to fly back to the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Left aboard the space station were their replacements, Crew 8 commander Matthew Dominick, co-pilot Michael Barratt, Jeanette Epps and cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin with Soyuz crew Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub and NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara.
Launched last September aboard the Soyuz MS-24/70S shuttle, Kononenko and Chub are halfway through a one-year mission while O’Hara is completing a more usual six-month tour of duty.
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, who now holds the record for the most cumulative time spent in space over his four mission. As of Tuesday, his cumulative time in space was 916 days.
During a change of command ceremony on Sunday, outgoing Expedition 70 commander Mogensen turned the station over to Kononenko, who now holds the record for the most cumulative time spent in space over his four mission. As of Tuesday, his cumulative time in space was 916 days.
“On my first mission in 2015, I had the pleasure of flying with Gennady Padalka, who set the record (multiple endurance flight) for 878 days in space,” Mogensen said during the ceremony.
“You have now surpassed that,” he told Kononenko, “and you are well on your way to 1,000 days in space, which is an incredible feat. No one is 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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