Dragon capsule lands in Florida with Crew-6 mission members
Miami, United States, Sep 4 (EFE).- The SpaceX Dragon capsule landed early Monday off the coast of Florida, United States, with four crew members of NASA’s Crew-6 mission on board, aerospace company SpaceX reported on social media.
“Dragon splashes down off the coast of Florida with the Crew-6 astronauts, completing Dragon’s sixth long-duration mission to the International Space Station,” the private aerospace company that designs, manufactures and launches these spaceships announced at 01:23 a.m. (05:23 GMT.)
The Dragon Endurance capsule had separated from the International Space Station at 7:05 a.m. Eastern time (12:05 GMT) in the US from the Harmony module to begin the return trip to Earth, which had had to be postponed for a day due to the malfunction.
Crew-6 members are NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen (mission commander) and pilot Woody Hoburg; United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Alneyadi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, who spent 186 days in orbit.
NASA reported that the agency’s sixth commercial crew rotation mission concluded with the successful landing of the Dragon spacecraft off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, at 12:17 p.m. (04:17 GMT). The ISS and the SpaceX ship were recovered so that the crew could be taken to the Johnson Space Center of the US Aerospace Agency, in Houston, Texas.
“After spending six months aboard the International Space Station, traveling nearly 79 million miles (126.4 million kilometers) during its mission and completing hundreds of scientific experiments to benefit all of humanity, the SpaceX Crew-6 NASA has returned home to planet Earth,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement.
“This international crew,” he added, “represented three nations, but together they demonstrated humanity’s shared ambition to reach new cosmic shores. Crew-6’s contributions will help prepare NASA to return to the Moon under Artemis, continue to Mars, and improve life here on Earth.”
After taking off on Mar. 2 from the Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, and docking the next day at the space station, the Crew-6 crew has carried out scientific research and maintenance tasks on the so-called orbital laboratory during this time.
“We welcomed the visiting Axiom crew on board, did three spacewalks…, did a lot of maintenance, and hope to leave the space station a little better than we found it,” Hoburg said this week during a farewell ceremony.
The members of this mission have briefly lived with the crew of Crew-7, which on Aug. 27 docked at the station with its four crew members and temporarily populated the space station with 11 occupants.
Crew-7 also completed a six-month mission and is commanded by NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli and Andreas Mogensen, from the European Space Agency, as well as Satoshi Furukawa, from Japanese agency JAXA, and Konstantin Borisov, of the Russian Roscosmos. EFE
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