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Four astronauts boarded the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule and returned from the International Space Station on Friday, ending their nearly six-month stay aboard the orbiting laboratory.
The astronauts – Jill Lindgren, Bob Hines and Jessica Watkins of NASA, as well as Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency or ESA – shared a farewell hug with other astronauts on the space station and were tied to the their spacecraft around 10:00. Eastern time.
The Crew Dragon spacecraft left its docking station on the International Space Station around noon EAST It has made a gradual journey home to the edge of Earth’s dense inner atmosphere. Then the capsule restarted its engines to orient itself as it re-entered. This movement began to slow the spacecraft from its orbital speed of approximately 17,500 mph (28,164 km / h). The heat shield protected the astronauts as the fiery flight to Earth heated the spacecraft’s outer surface to over 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,650 degrees Celsius).
Then a parachute plume further slowed its descent before reaching a descent off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida just before 5 p.m. ET. Rescue ships waited nearby and pulled the spacecraft out of the water, allowing the astronauts to get out of the capsule and breathe the first fresh air in about 170 days.
This mission, called Crew-4, set a historical precedent as Watkins became the first black woman to join the space station crew for an extended stay.
During their stay, the astronauts conducted scientific experiments, including research on growing vegetables in soilless space and studying the effects of space flight on the human body.
These experiments are designed to help astronauts understand how they might someday grow their own food and how their bodies might interact in deeper missions in space, such as NASA’s planned Artemis moon missions, Watkins said at a news conference last week. week.
“It was wonderful to be able to walk into the Columbus unit and smell the plant leaves and plant growth,” Watkins told reporters.
Cristoforetti, who had been on a previous mission to the space station in 2014-2015, is the only woman in the European Space Agency’s astronaut corps and she herself made history on this mission. Last month she took over as commander of the space station, becoming the first European woman to do so.
Cristofetti also conducted a spacewalk in July for its publication small satellite And the job is to install a new robotic arm on the outer surface of the space station.
