A crew of two Americans, a Russian and a Japanese is back on Earth on Saturday August 9, after the successful bitter of the SpaceX Dragon capsule off California, according to the video flow broadcast by the space company. The Americans Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, the Russian Kirill Peskov, and the Japanese Takuya Onishi spent almost five months in space.
Their return concludes the tenth crew rotation mission of the International Space Station (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 company Elon Musk, Amerri in the Pacific Ocean at 8:34 am (5:34 p.m. French time) after having detached the day before the ISS. Its dizzying descent was braked by the entrance into the earth’s atmosphere, then by immense parachutes. The capsule had to be recovered by a SpaceX ship and, once hoisted on board, be finally open to let astronauts get out.
A particularly scrutinized departure
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.
