Spacex taxi service brings four astronauts home with midnight splashdown
SPACEX brought four astronauts home with a midnight splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, capping the busiest month yet for Elon Musk’s space taxi service.
The three US astronauts and one German transported back to Earth in the capsule were bobbing off the Florida coast, near Tampa, less than 24 hours after leaving the International Space Station.
Nasa’s Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron, and the European Space Agency’s Matthias Maurer, embraced the seven astronauts remaining at the station, before parting ways.
Mr Maurer said: “It’s the end of a six-month mission, but I think the space dream lives on.”
Spacex brought up their US and Italian replacements last wee, after completing a charter trip to the station for three businessmen. That amounts to two crew launches and two splashdowns in barely a month.
Mr Musk’s company has now launched 26 people into orbit in less than two years, after it started ferrying astronauts for Nasa. Eight of those 26 were space tourists.
“Welcome home,” Spacex Mission Control radioed at splashdown. “Thanks for flying Spacex.”
“That was a great ride,” replied Mr Chari, the capsule commander. As for the reintroduction to gravity, he noted: “Only one complaint. These water bottles are super-heavy.”
All four were out of the capsule an hour later, waving and giving thumbs up as they were taken away for medical checks.
The astronauts said their mission was highlighted by the three visitors and their ex-astronaut escort who dropped by last month, opening up Nasa’s side of the station to paying guests after decades of resistance.
They had to contend with a dangerous spike in space debris after Russia blew up a satellite in a missile test in mid November. More than 1,500 pieces of shrapnel will spread across Earth’s orbit for years to come.
While the war in Ukraine has caused tensions between the US and Russia, the astronauts have stood by their Russian crewmates, and vice versa.
Flight controllers in Houston and Moscow also continued to cooperate as always, according to Nasa officials.
As he relinquished command of the space station earlier this week, Mr Marshburn called it “a place of peace” and said international cooperation would likely be its lasting legacy.