After almost five months in the space on board the International Space Station (ISS) and seventeen hours in a SpaceX capsule, the crew-10 crew will return, on Saturday, August 9, on Earth.
This operation will conclude the tenth crew rotation mission of the ISS carried out as part of the NASA “Commercial Crew” program, created to succeed the era of the space shuttle by associating with private industry.
The Dragon Capsule, of the Multimillionaire Elon Musk company, transporting American astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, the Russian astronaut Kirill Peskov and the Japanese Takuya Onishi, detached from the station at 0:15 am Saturday (Paris time). Its vertiginous descent will be hampered by the entrance into the earth’s atmosphere, then by immense parachutes, before touching sea at 5:33 p.m. off California, on the west coast of the United States (8:33 am local time).
A particularly scrutinized departure
The capsule will then be recovered by a SpaceX ship and, once hoisted on board, will finally be open to let astronauts get out. During their stay in the ISS, the crew called “CREW-10” carried out multiple scientific experiences, studying plant growth or the way in which cells react to gravity.
In March, their departure in space had been particularly scrutinized because it had to allow the return of two American astronauts stuck in space for nine months. Leaving for an eight -day mission in 2024, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams had been blocked since June on the ISS due to failures on the Starliner vessel of Boeing which had sent them. After twenty-five years of service for NASA, Mr. Wilmore decided to retire, the space agency announced this week.
On Saturday August 2, a crew of four people-CREW-11-launched by NASA and SpaceX, moored at the ISS for a mission planned over a period of six months.