Screenshot of the arrival on Earth of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying four ISS astronauts on May 2, 2021 in the Gulf of Mexico. – HANDOUT / NASA / AFP
New success for NASA and SpaceX. The SpaceX spacecraft bringing back to Earth four astronauts from the International Space Station (ISS) landed early this Sunday morning off Panama City, Florida, according to a live broadcast from NASA. Boats were deployed to retrieve the capsule and the astronauts from the ISS.
WATCH LIVE: NASA’s @SpaceX Crew-1 astronauts return to Earth inside the Dragon Resilience after a six-month science mission aboard the @Space_Station. Splashdown off the coast of Florida is targeted for 2:57 am ET (06:57 UT). https://t.co/qGjGIYPM52
– NASA (@NASA) May 2, 2021
The four astronauts, Americans Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and Japanese Soichi Noguch, had left the International Space Station on Saturday aboard a SpaceX company, after more than 160 days in space.
A flight of about 6.30 hours to Earth
The Crew Dragon capsule detached from the ISS at the scheduled time (8:35 p.m. this Saturday on the American east coast, 00:35 GMT this Sunday). “Thank you for your hospitality, (…) we will see each other on Earth,” said Michael Hopkins, one of the four astronauts, to those who remained on board the Station.
After a return flight to Earth of about 6.5 hours, the four astronauts landed this Sunday in the Gulf of Mexico. “We trained to recover the crews day and night,” reassured Steve Stich, head of NASA’s commercial flights program, questioned shortly before the capsule’s departure. “The boats have a lot of lighting” and we will have “the light of the moon”, he said, adding that the weather conditions were excellent for the moment, with calm seas. SpaceX ships can reach the capsule “about 10 minutes after landing,” he said.
The Americans Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and the Japanese Soichi Noguchi were last November the first astronauts of an “operational” mission to be transported to the ISS by the space company of Elon Musk, which s is imposed as an essential partner of NASA.
The departure of this crew, Crew-1, follows the arrival on board the ISS last week of a second regular mission carried by the American company (Crew-2), which includes the French astronaut. Thomas Pesquet, and to whom the baton has been passed in recent days.