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Four astronauts from Nasa and SpaceX’s five-month Crew-5 mission returned safely from International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday as the spacecraft carrying them splashed down off the coast of Florida.
The SpaceX capsule, dubbed Endurance, parachuted safely down in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Tampa, Florida, at 9:02 pm EST (7:32 am as per Indian standard time), returning two Nasa astronauts, one Japanese astronaut, and one Russian cosmonaut after 157 days in space, according to a Nasa blog post.
What is Nasa’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission
The Crew-5 mission was launched on October 5 on a Falcon 9 rocket from the US agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and got docked on the ISS the next day to start routine science studies. The Crew Dragon spacecraft’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission marked the eighth crewed orbital flight overall and the fifth operational Nasa Commercial Crew Program flight.
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Members of the Nasa’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission
Anna Kikina, 38, became the first Russian to fly on an American spacecraft in 20 years, as a result of an agreement signed in 2022 between Nasa and Russia’s space agency to conduct joint flights. With her, Nasa flight commander Nicole Aunapu Mann, 45, the first Native American woman in space, Nasa pilot Josh Cassada, 49, and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, 59, who was on her fifth space mission, were also on board.
The mission is succeeded by Nasa’s SpaceX Crew-6 team, which also includes four members: Nasa astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg, along with United Arab Emirates (UAE) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.
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