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Four astronauts returned from a six-month stay on the International Space Station on Monday, splashing down in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule off the coast of Florida.
Astronauts, members of the Crew-6 mission jointly operated by NASA and SpaceX, departed the space station at 7:05 a.m. ET on Sunday. The crew spent the day aboard the 13-foot-wide Crew Dragon as it sailed through Earth’s orbit to its target landing site off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, landing just after midnight ET.
The Crew Dragon capsule was flying at more than 17,000 miles per hour (27,000 kilometers per hour) and as it began its final leg of descent, the outside of the spacecraft heated to about 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,900 degrees Celsius) during sliceback. . in the thickest part of Earth’s atmosphere. Inside the spacecraft’s cabin, passengers would have been protected by a heat shield and kept at a comfortable temperature well below 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 degrees Celsius).
The capsule then deployed a set of parachutes to further slow its descent. Rescue workers waiting near the droplet site are ready to pull the spacecraft out of the sea and onto a special boat called the Dragon’s Den, which will undergo a final safety inspection before the crew can disembark. be exposed.
Before the astronauts left the space station, NASA said it was monitoring the effects of Hurricane Idalia, which made landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast Wednesday morning. The storm hit northern Florida before moving through southern Georgia and into the Carolinas.
The four astronauts who make up the Crew-6 team include NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren “Woody” Horberg, as well as the second astronaut from the United Arab Emirates, They include Sultan Alneyadi and Russian cosmonaut Andrei Fezyaev.
The group spent six months in the orbiting laboratory after launching into the station in March. Over the past week, Crew 6 astronauts worked to greet and take over the duties of Crew 7 team members, who arrived at the space station on August 27.
During their time in space, the Crew-6 astronauts were scheduled to oversee more than 200 science and technology projects.
“We were able to accomplish a lot during the mission,” Hoberg said during a remote press conference with astronauts on Aug. 23. “We visited two SpaceX cargo vehicles, the CRS-27 and 28 missions, which are loaded with a lot of science.” And as a crew, we conducted a total of three spacewalks. . ”
During their stay, the Crew-6 astronauts also hosted the crew of Axiom Mission 2. The crew consisted of a former NASA astronaut and three paying customers, including an American businessman and two Saudi astronauts. The flight was part of a plan to regularly fly tourists and other paying customers to the International Space Station, as NASA seeks to increase the amount of commercial activity in low Earth orbit.
“This was a big adventure and a lot of fun,” Hoburg added.