Astronauts back on earth!
Miami, Aug 9 (EFE).-
The four astronauts of the SpaceX and NASA Crew-10 mission splashed down on Saturday off the coast of California, on the west coast of the United States, after almost five months on the International Space Station (ISS), where they conducted experiments to facilitate future space explorations.
Aboard a Dragon capsule from Elon Musk’s company, the crew reached space at around 8:33 am Pacific Time on Saturday, having undocked from the ISS on Friday. They were replaced by the Crew-11 mission crew.
“Welcome back, Crew-10! NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov splashed down off the coast of San Diego in their SpaceX Dragon spacecraft at 11:33 am ET (1533 UTC),” posted the NASA Kennedy Space Center on social media alongside images of the parachute descent.
NASA stated that the splashdown marked the end of a “five-month science expedition aboard the orbiting laboratory and will return time-sensitive research to Earth.”
On its official website, SpaceX stated that, during their time in the orbital laboratory, the crew had conducted research to prepare for human exploration beyond low Earth orbit and to benefit humanity, including biomedical experiments and technological studies.
The Crew-10 crew members are Commander Anne McClain and Pilot Nichole Ayers, both from NASA, as well as Mission Specialist Takuya Onishi from the Japanese space agency JAXA and Russian Cosmonaut Kirill Peskov.
They arrived at the International Space Station on Mar. 16 after launching from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA clarified: “The Crew-10 mission will be the first crewed flight to splashdown off the coast of California as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.”
It is also the 10th operational trip that SpaceX has carried out to the ISS.
They returned via a controlled parachute descent off the Pacific coast, a procedure that requires stable weather conditions to ensure the safety of the crew and their scientific equipment, some of which is time-sensitive. EFE ppc/dgp
