After spending almost three months in space, three American astronauts and one German they started the journey back to earth aboard a SpaceX capsule, whose splashdown off the coast of Florida is scheduled for Thursday night.
The Dragon Shark separated from the International Space Station (ISS) at 7:20 in the morning (Spanish time) on Thursday.
Americans Kayla Barron, Raja Chari and Tom Marshburn, as well as European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Matthias Maurer, will remain in total almost 24 hours in the space capsule prior to splash down at 6:43 a.m. on Friday.
Back home
The vertiginous descent will be slowed down by entering the earth’s atmosphere and then after him deployment of huge parachutes. The capsule will later be rescued by a Elon Musk’s company boat. Once on board, the hatch will open for the astronauts to exit.
The crew, named Crew-3, spent the last few days aboard the
ISS performing the handover operations with Crew-4, also made up of four astronauts (three Americans and one Italian). The new crew took off from Florida a week ago, also aboard a SpaceX ship.
Three Russian cosmonauts also remain on the ISS, arriving for their part on a Soyuz rocket. So that, It will be the sixth splashdown of a manned SpaceX Dragon capsule, which regularly transports astronauts to the ISS for NASA.
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Crew-3 members carried out several scientific experiments. They studied, for example, how cement hardens in the absence of gravity, something that could be very useful for future construction, for example on the Moon.
They also carried out the second harvest of peppers on board the station. And, during your stay, they also received the visit of a private missionmade up of three businessmen who paid SpaceX tens of millions of dollars for the trip and stay on the ISS.