Four members of the Crew-3 mission returned to Earth on Friday from the International Space Station (ISS), successfully reaching the waters of the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida (USA).
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The Dragon capsule splashed down at the scheduled time, 00:43 local time (7:43 Kyiv time), and shortly thereafter, the crew began boarding the boats of the rescue teams waiting for them in the harbor.
And…splashdown! Dragon has safely made it home with precious cargo aboard: four #Crew3 astronauts!
Now they wait for the recovery vehicle, which is named after Shannon Walker, mission specialist for the first crewed @SpaceX mission to the @Space_Station :pic.twitter.com/VDDXdsxkbH
— NASA (@NASA) May 6, 2022
NASA astronauts Kayla Barron, Raja Chari and Tom Marshburn, and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Matthias Maurer completed the 24-hour descent after spending almost six months in the orbiting laboratory, where they arrived on November 11 last year.
Marshburn, the mission commander, made his third spaceflight while the other three crew members were in space for the first time. Crew-3, which, as the name suggests, is the third manned operational flight that SpaceX has sent into space.
During their stay on the ISS, they conducted over a hundred scientific projects, in addition to three EVAs; Barron and Chari took two walks each, while Marshburn and Maurer took one walk each.
In addition to going out to replace the station’s solar arrays, mission members conducted various studies, including studying complex growing and germination processes, the results of which will be useful for future long-term space travel.
The #Crew3 mission is officially complete!
After launching from Kennedy on Nov. 10, 2021, @SpaceX ‘s Dragon Endurance splashed down off the coast of Florida today at 12:43am ET, bringing @Astro_Raja , @AstroMarshburn , Kayla Barron, and @Astro_Matthias home:https://t.co/wGNaM6g04xpic. twitter.com/48fiA9sNca
— NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (@NASAKennedy) May 6, 2022
Members of the Crew-3 mission return home after shifting Crew-4, whose crew arrived at the orbital laboratory aboard the new Dragon capsule on April 27 for another six-month shift at the station.
Crew-4 includes astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Robert Hines and Jessica Watkins, as well as Italian Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency (ESA).
Members of Crew-4 joined Expedition 67 just three days after Ax-1 returned to Earth, the first fully private mission to reach the space station, led by Spanish-born former NASA astronaut Miguel López Alegria.
The Ax-1 spacecraft, coordinated by Axiom Space, a private company from Houston (USA), launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida and arrived at the ISS on April 9, where its four crew members spent two weeks performing scientific research .
On May 19, Boeing plans to launch an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the second unmanned mission in which the private firm hopes to successfully send its Starliner spacecraft to the ISS .
