Hours before the International Space Station (ISS), NASA’s “Crew-4” astronauts made a successful ocean landing near Florida.
The NASA crew, who left the ISS in SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft after their 6-month mission in space, parachuted off Florida in a successful 5-hour return operation.
While the return operation was followed non-stop from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, the Dragon spacecraft opened its parachutes about 5 minutes after re-entering the atmosphere and landed in the water at 4:55 pm local Florida time. 4 minutes later.
They remained in orbit for 6 months
The crew, consisting of Bob Hines, Kjell Lindgren and Jessica Watkins, as well as European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, were transported to the space station from SpaceX in April for a 6-month stay in the orbiting research laboratory.
4 other astronauts left last week
Elon Musk’s SpaceX company sent 4 more astronauts to the ISS last week “Crew-5” he had accomplished his mission.
Since the first manned flight in May 2020, SpaceX has carried a total of 30 people into orbit through 6 NASA missions and two private flights.
