Astronauts come back to Earth with Pacific Splashdown after a 5 -month ISS mission
Four crew members who flew to the International Space Station (ISS) earlier this year to relieve two astronauts that were blocked by a besieged space capsule returned to Earth on Saturday.
The astronauts of NASA Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, as well as Takuya Onishi from Japan and Kirill Peskov in Russia, splashed the Pacific off the coast of Southern California on Saturday morning at 11:33 am in a SpaceX capsule.
It was the first splash of the Pacific for NASA in 50 years, and the third for SpaceX with people on board.
NASA astronauts were splashed for the last time in the Pacific in 1975, during the Apollo-Soyuz mission, the first equipped international spatial mission which involved the Americans and the Soviets.
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A SpaceX capsule carrying four crew members in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of southern California on Saturday. (Keegan Barber / Nasa via AP)
The crew was launched in March, replacing Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who remained stuck at the space station for nine months on what was to be a mission of a week after the Boeing Starliner in which they arrived in propulsion problems and helium leaks.
NASA concluded that bringing them back to earth in the capsule was too risky, so the Starliner went back without crew, and Wilmore and Williams returned home in a SpaceX capsule in March after the arrival of their replacements.
Wilmore announced his retirement after 25 years with NASA this week.
“We want this mission, our mission, recalls what people can do when we work together, when we explore together,” said McClain before leaving the space station on Friday, mentioning “a few tumultuous moments on earth”.
The members of NASA Spacex Crew-10 Jaxa (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Astronaut Takuya Onishi, the astronauts of the NASA Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, and Roscosmos Cosmonaut Kirill Peskov, posing before returning to the earth for an international space station. (NASA via AP)
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She said she was looking forward to “doing nothing for a few days” once at home, and her teammates were enthusiastic about showers and burgers.
Earlier this year, SpaceX decided to switch their Florida splashes to California to reduce the risk of debris on populated areas.
After leaving the spaceship, the crew received medical checks before being transported by helicopter to meet a NASA plane for Houston.
“Overall, the mission went very well, pleased to recover the crew,” said Steve Stich, director of the NASA sales crew program at a press conference after Splashdown. “SpaceX did an excellent job to recover the crew again on the west coast.”
The crew members inside the space capsule after splash. (Keegan Barber / Nasa via Getty Images)
Dina Contella, assistant director of the International Program of the International Space Station of NASA, added that she was “quite happy to see the crew 10 team on Earth. They looked great, and they are doing very well”.
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She noted that the crew had orbited the earth 2,368 times and traveled more than 63 million miles during their 146 days at the space station.
