SpaceX brings four astronauts home, then launches 53 satellites
NASA thanked SpaceX for its ‘seamless operations’
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX brought four astronauts home in a midnight splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico on Friday, capping the busiest stretch yet for Elon Musk’s taxi service.
The three U.S. astronauts and one German in the capsule were bobbing off the Florida coast less than 24 hours after leaving the International Space Station (ISS). NASA expected to have them back in Houston later in the morning. “That was a great ride,” said Raja Chari, capsule commander.
Chari, Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron, and the European Space Agency’s Matthias Maurer, were out of the capsule within an hour of splashdown, waving as they were hustled away for medical checks.
Their departure from the ISS Thursday was bittersweet. “It’s the end of a sixmonth mission, but I think the space dream lives on,” Maurer said.
SpaceX took up their U.S. and Italian replacements last week after completing a charter trip to the station for a trio of businessmen earlier in April.
That amounts to two crew launches and two splashdowns in barely a month. Musk’s company has now launched 26 people into orbit in less than two years since it started ferrying astronauts for NASA. Eight of those 26 were space tourists.
SpaceX’s William Gerstenmaier, a vice president, acknowledges it’s “a pretty exciting time.”
Barely five hours after splashdown, the company founded by Musk in 2002 launched a fresh batch of 53 of its own internet satellites, known as Starlinks, from Cape Canaveral.
“Satellites are nice, but flying people is a little special and a little bit different, and the team here sure understands that,” he told reporters. “There’s a sense of relief and … accomplishment that you know you’ve done something good.”
NASA is more impressed than ever, given SpaceX’s unprecedented pace. The only problem of note in the latest flight was a mechanical nut that got loose and floated away from the SpaceX capsule after Thursday’s undocking. Officials assured everyone it would not be a danger to the space station.
Kathy Lueders, NASA’s space operations mission chief, noted, “I really want to personally thank SpaceX for just, wow, just performing such seamless operations on all those missions.”
The astronauts said their mission was highlighted by the three visitors and their ex-astronaut escort, who dropped by in April, opening up NASA’s side of the station to paying guests after decades of resistance.
Up there now are three Russians, three Americans and one Italian. It was Marshburn’s third spaceflight and the first for the three returning with him. Chari and Barron’s next stop could be the moon as they are among 18 U.S. astronauts picked for NASA’s Artemis moonlanding program. Two others in that group are at the ISS now.