The NASA and SpaceX Crew-5 mission left the International Space Station (ISS) in the early hours of this Saturday and travels back to Earth with its four occupants, who will land on board a capsule in waters near Florida (USA) after almost six months of stay in the space laboratory.
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The ship Dragon de SpaceX with the name of “Endurance” began the trip from the ISS at 02:20 local time (07:20 GMT) on Saturday, a few minutes later than planned, and its plunge into the sea is expected for 21:02 (02:02 GMT on Sunday), according to the agency. American Space.
The splashdown is scheduled to occur “near Tampa off the (west) coast of Florida,” NASA detailed. The uncoupling of the “Endurance” was broadcast live by NASA in a transmission where it was possible to observe how the ship was moving away in the midst of the darkness of space.
the capsule and its occupants, the Americans Josh Cassada and Nicole Aunapu Mann, the Japanese Koichi Wakata and the Russian Anna Kikinawill be rescued in the area of the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico (there are seven established for this) where the ditching finally takes place.
“The crew is incredibly proud of the work we have accomplished while there. We are excited to return to that beautiful planet of ours and to those wonderful people there,” NASA astronaut Josh Cassada said after the capsule lifted away from the space lab.
NASA delayed the departure of the ISS twice due to weather problems, last Wednesday and Thursday. Following the separation of “Endurance,” NASA’s coverage of Crew-5’s return continued with audio only, while full image coverage resumed with the splashdown broadcast.
This “Mission Audio,” as NASA calls it, includes live discussions between astronauts in space and flight controllers and ground support personnel.
The Crew-5 mission arrived on October 6 at the space laboratory, after a trip of around 30 hours that began in Cape Canaveral (Florida), from where the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket took off that propelled the ship “Endurance” into space.
It is the first of these missions to the ISS in SpaceX ships that began in 2020 commanded by a woman, the American Nicole Aunapu Mann, which is also the first member of one of the Native American tribes to get to space. He belongs to the Wailacki-Round Valley Indian tribe of Northern California.
The pilot is Josh Cassada, also an American, and the specialists are Koichi Wakata, from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and Anna Kikina, from the Russian space agency Roscosmos.
During their nearly six months on the ISS, Crew-5 astronauts have performed scientific and technical experiments and station maintenance. The Crew-5 mission was taken over on March 3 by the Crew-6 mission, who arrived on the ISS that day for a six-month stay.
At Crew-6 is integrated by Stephen Bowen y Warren Hoburgfrom the US agency, commander and pilot of the mission, respectively, as well as the specialists Sultan Al Neyadifrom the space agency of the United Arab Emirates, and Andrey Fedyaev, from the Russian Roscosmos.
Crew-6, like the other NASA missions with Space X, pave the way “for human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit and to improve life on Earth”, according to the US space agency.
NASA plans to send a manned mission to the Moon in 2024 as part of the Artemis program.
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With the so-called commercial program with private companies such as Elon Musk’s, with which it signed a contract in 2014 for 2.6 billion dollars, NASA resumed trips to the ISS from US territory, something it had not done since the end of the program. ferries in 2011.