SpaceX Crew Dragon astronauts arrive at their home with a rare pre-dawn splash in the Gulf of Mexico

Four astronauts attached to their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, disembarked from the International Space Station and plunged into a pre-dawn flight over the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday, closing the first operational flight of the futuristic touch ferry from SpaceX.

First Crew Commander Michael Hopkins, along with NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and Japanese astronaut Soishi Noguchi, separated from the space-facing port in the station’s Front Harmony Unit at 8:35 p.m. EST on Saturday.

This created the second test water landing for NASA’s post-shuttle commercial crew program and only the third night in space history – the first in nearly 45 years.

But The Crew Dragon executed the textbook back to Earth, went out of orbit, deployed four massive parachutes and settled into a gentle drizzle south of Panama City, Florida, at 2:56 a.m., completing a mission spanning 2,688 orbits during the trip. 168 days since launch. Last November.

Dragon, on behalf of NASA and the SpaceX team, welcomes you back to planet Earth, and thanks you for flying SpaceX, via the company’s capsule communications device. “For those enrolled in our frequent flyer program, I earned 68 million miles on this trip.”

Hopkins replied, “It’s okay to return to planet Earth.” “And we’re going to cover that distance. Can it be moved? “

“Dan Dragon, we have to refer you to our marketing department for this policy.”

Despite nightfall, NASA’s WB-57 tracker spacecraft captured a stunning infrared view of the capsule as it descended through the dense lower atmosphere as cameras on the rescue ship SpaceX showed the moment of collapse.

The SpaceX crew has rushed to Crew Dragon to secure the spaceship and transport it to the company’s rescue ship. The astronauts remain inside, waiting to be transported to the capsule, as the men stand beside them to help them out, on stretchers if necessary, as they begin to re-adapt to gravity after five and a half months in space.

“Great trip! Thanks to the @ NASA, SpaceX, and @ USCG team for a safe and successful trip back to Earth, ”tweeted Glover. “One step closer to family and home!”

Before climbing alone, Hopkins dispatched flight controllers at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, saying, “On behalf of Crew-1 and our family, we just want to thank you.”

“We want to thank this incredible vehicle, flexibility,” he said. “We said that before the mission and I’ll say it here after, it’s amazing what can be achieved when people get together. So in the end, I just want to say quite frankly, you all changed the world. Congratulations. It’s amazing to be back. “

After medical examinations and home phone calls with friends and family, the four crew members were scheduled to be flown ashore by helicopter and sent to NASA personnel on a return flight to Johnson Space Center in Houston.

While mission managers prefer to land during the day, bad weather has ruled out plans for re-entry on Wednesdays and Saturdays. With winds forecast moderate by Sunday morning, NASA and SpaceX agreed to target the return of Crew 1 astronauts before dawn.

“Night landing? At sea? Good thing there are Navy pilots! I got the message ‘AstroVicGlover !!! “Astronaut Nick Haigh on Twitter, referring to Glover’s experience as an F / A18 carrier pilot.” Endurance crew. “

In contrast to Crew Dragon’s first test flight last August, when the spacecraft was quickly surrounded by ships enjoying a sunny Sunday afternoon in the bay, the Coast Guard plans to establish a 10-mile-wide safe zone for this landing. keep the audience away in the morning. Far.

Return Dragon Crew has completed a crew recording course requiring two launches and two landings with four different spacecraft in just three weeks to replace the entire International Space Station crew of seven.

On April 9, Prof. Russian Soyuz spacecraft Oleg Nowitzki, Piotr Dubrov and NASA astronaut Mark Vandy He were transferred to the station after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. They are replaced Another Soyuz crew – Sergey Rijikov, Sergey Kod Svershkov, and Kate Robbins – who returned to Earth on April 17.

Then, on April 24, Crew Dragon brought in Crew-2 captain Shane Kimbro, NASA astronaut Megan MacArthur, European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet and Japanese pilot Akihiko Hoshid. To the station. The first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket is He launched it the day before He also helped launch Hopkins & Co., the crew to board the station.

After helping Crew 2 astronauts settle into the laboratory complex, Hopkins, Glover, Walker, and Noguchi, He arrived at the station on November 16, Said goodbye to the crew of seven on Saturday night and paraded the Crew Dragon to their class.

After moving further afield, the ship’s flight computer fired the ship’s thrusters for about 16.5 minutes starting at 2:03 a.m. on Sunday.

Moving through space at more than 17,100 miles per hour – more than 83 football fields per second – the missile launch slows Dragon’s crew by 258 miles per hour, enough to drop the far side of the orbit into the dense low atmosphere. A trajectory aimed at the Bay Mexico landing zone.

Protected by a high-tech heat shield, the Crew Dragon reached the visible atmosphere at around 2:45 a.m., slowing rapidly in a fire of air friction.

After exiting the plasma heating zone, the spacecraft’s parachute is opened, allowing the ship to settle into the bay with a relatively pleasant effect.

The last previous night’s landfall in water occurred in October 1976 when two astronauts aboard the Soviet-era Soyuz spacecraft made an unplanned landing in blizzard-like conditions after failing to anchor, and were diverted from their course on a large lake in Kazakhstan. It took nine hours for the rescue crew to move the spacecraft to the ground and rescue the astronauts.

The only other night’s devastation occurred in December 1968 when the crew of Apollo 8, returning from a Christmas expedition around the moon, made a planned event-free landing before dawn in the Pacific Ocean.

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