NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley they left the International Space Station (ISS) aboard the cápsula Dragon Endeavour SpaceX This Saturday and if the weather conditions allow it, they will arrive on Earth this Sunday after completing a historic mission begun on May 30.
The capsule fell in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico around 2:48 pm, the same time in Chile, on Sunday and will probably be towed to Pensacola (northwest Florida).
This will end the Demo-2 mission, with which SpaceX, Elon Musk’s company, will be certified for commercial space travel.
Behnken and Hurley’s journey was the first from American soil and on a commercial ship to the ISS since in 2011 the NASA shuttle program ended.
The Tropical storm Isaías, which is approaching the east coast of Florida after passing through the Bahamas and the Caribbean, makes it difficult to return to land closer to Cape Canaveral, where the Dragon Endeavor started on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
NASA and SpaceX are closely monitoring weather forecasts ahead of the capsule plunging into the sea.
Pensacola is the first port chosen to tow the ship but there are other options on the table.
“If there was a change in the weather in the next few hours we could still keep Behnken and Hurley in Earth orbit. They have enough supplies on board to stay indoors for a couple of days, “said a NASA spokeswoman, Leah Cheshier.
That would give time for the weather to improve or to find another location for the capsule dive.
Behnken and Hurley, who have slept eight of the 19 hours it takes to return to Earth from the ISS, they were awakened from the control center with an audio recording of the children of both, according to a NASA statement.
In total, they spent 62 days on board the ISS, during which they circled Earth 1,024, spent 114 hours in research, and watched various space vehicles arrive and depart from the space station, NASA reported.
Behnken participated in four spacewalks with another NASA astronaut, Chris Cassidy, who was on the ISS when they arrived.
If the outward journey was historical, the return as well, since It will be the first time in 45 years that people have seen the landing of a spaceship.
The last time was on July 21, 1975, when the crew of an Apollo-Soyuz mission fell into the Pacific Ocean, near Hawaii.
In 2014 NASA awarded Boeing and SpaceX contracts totaling $ 6.8 billion to develop the commercial space transportation program and stop depending on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft that has orbited the US agency’s astronauts since it was canceled. its ferry program in 2011.
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