The Crew-12 astronauts begin their return to Earth and will splash down in California.
Miami (USA), Oct 7 (EFE)
NASA’s Crew-12 mission capsule successfully undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday and began its return journey to Earth with its four crew members on board, including French astronaut Sophie Adenot, after nearly eight months in the orbiting laboratory.
The Dragon spacecraft undocked from the orbiting laboratory at 8:05 a.m. EDT (12:05 GMT) and is scheduled to splash down around 11:34 a.m. on Thursday (3:34 p.m. GMT) off the coast of California in the Pacific Ocean.
In addition to Adenot, who in August became the first French woman to perform a spacewalk, NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, and cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev (of the Russian space agency Roscosmos) are also aboard the capsule.
The four members of the mission arrived at the International Space Station on February 14, replacing Crew-11, which was forced to return to Earth prematurely due to the health problems of its commander, Mike Fincke, resulting in the first medical evacuation in the station’s history.
Since then, the Crew-12 members have conducted experiments and maintenance, in addition to several spacewalks.
The most notable of these took place on August 18 and involved Adenot and NASA astronaut Anil Menon. It was the first of three spacewalks that the French astronaut performed in less than a month to install an antenna designed to improve communication with Earth.
Adenot is also the second French woman to travel to space, after Claudie Haigneré in 1996.
The four astronauts of Crew-12 are being replaced by the members of Crew-13, who docked with the laboratory on October 1 as part of the NASA and SpaceX personnel rotation missions.
