Miami (EFE) capsule in waters near Florida (USA) after almost six months in the space laboratory.
The SpaceX Dragon ship with the name “Endurance” undertook the journey from the ISS at 02:20 local time (07:20 GMT) on Saturday, a few minutes later than planned, and its plunge into the sea is expected for 21.02 (02.02 GMT on Sunday), as updated by the US space agency.
The splashdown is scheduled to occur “near Tampa off the (west) coast of Florida,” NASA detailed.
The undocking of the “Endurance” was broadcast live by NASA in a transmission where it was possible to observe how the ship moved away in the midst of the darkness of space.
excitement in the crew
The capsule and its occupants, the Americans Josh Cassada and Nicole Aunapu Mann, the Japanese Koichi Wakata and the Russian Anna Kikina, will be rescued in the area of the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico (there are seven established for this) where the rescue will finally take place. splashdown.
“The crew is incredibly proud of the work we have accomplished while there. We are excited to return to that beautiful planet of ours and to those wonderful people there,” NASA astronaut Josh Cassada said after the capsule lifted away from the space lab.
NASA delayed the departure of the ISS twice due to weather problems, last Wednesday and Thursday.
Following the separation of Endurance, NASA’s coverage of Crew-5’s return continued with audio only, while full image coverage resumed with the splashdown broadcast.
This “Mission Audio,” as NASA calls it, includes live discussions between astronauts in space and flight controllers and support personnel on the ground.
First commanded by a woman
The Crew-5 mission arrived at the space laboratory on October 6, after a journey of around 30 hours that began in Cape Canaveral (Florida), from where the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket took off that propelled the “Endurance” ship into space. .
It is the first of these missions to the ISS in SpaceX ships that began in 2020 commanded by a woman, the American Nicole Aunapu Mann, who is also the first member of one of the native tribes of the United States. to reach space .
He belongs to the Wailacki-Round Valley Indian tribe of Northern California.
The pilot is Josh Cassada, also an American, and the specialists are Koichi Wakata, from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and Anna Kikina, from the Russian space agency Roscosmos.
During their nearly six months on the ISS, Crew-5 astronauts have performed scientific and technical experiments and station maintenance.
Succeeded by the Crew-6 mission
Crew-5 was replaced on March 3 by the Crew-6 mission, which arrived on the ISS that day for a six-month stay.
Crew-6 is made up of Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg, from the US agency, mission commander and pilot, respectively, as well as specialists Sultan Al Neyadi, from the United Arab Emirates space agency, and Andrey Fedyaev, from the Russian Roscosmos.
Crew-6, like NASA’s other Space X missions, will pave the way “for human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit and to improve life on Earth,” according to the US space agency.
NASA plans to send a manned mission to the Moon in 2024 as part of the Artemis program.
With the so-called commercial program with private companies such as Elon Musk’s, with which it signed a contract in 2014 for 2.6 billion dollars, NASA resumed trips to the ISS from US territory, something it had not done since the end of the program. ferries in 2011.