The four astronauts who left on Saturday International Space Station (EEI), landed tonight off Florida, in the USA, aboard a SpaceX capsule, after more than 160 days in space.
The Crew Dragon space capsule, called “Resilience”, fell by parachute in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Panama City, Florida, just before 3:00 am, time on the US East Coast (7 am in Lisbon), ending the second flight of the four astronauts to the company of Elon Musk.
Boats moved to retrieve the capsule and the astronauts.
After separating from the International Space Station at the scheduled time, at 8:35 pm Saturday, US Eastern Time (12:35 pm today in Lisbon), the Crew Dragon night flight back to Earth took about six and a half hours as planned.
The astronauts, three Americans and one Japanese, flew back to Earth in the same capsule that was launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in November.
The 167-day mission is the longest for the launch of US astronauts, as the previous record of 84 days had been set by NASA’s final Skylab station crew in 1974.
North American astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker of NASA and Soichi Noguchi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) were the first on an “operational” mission sent to EEI by SpaceX, a privately run company by US magnate Elon Musk last November.
Two Americans had already made the round trip to the EEI aboard the Crew Dragon capsule in 2020, during a two-month test mission.
This is the first regular mission to be brought back to Earth by SpaceX.
The space capsule also carries “scientific freezers full of research samples” carried out in zero gravity, NASA chief commercial flight program Steve Stich told France-Presse (AFP).
This crew’s return to Earth follows the arrival at the International Space Station last week of a second regular mission, which includes Frenchman Thomas Pesquet, Americans Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur and Japanese Akihiko Hoshide.
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