SpaceX Crew Dragon astronauts arrive home with rare pre-dawn splash in Gulf of Mexico
May 3, 2021 by archyde
Four astronauts were strapped to their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, disembarked from the International Space Station and plunged into a pre-dawn flight in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday, stopping the first operational flight of a futuristic SpaceX ferry.
First Crew Commander Michael Hopkins, along with NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and Japanese astronaut Soishi Noguchi, parted from the port facing space in the Harmony unit before the station at 8:35 p.m. EST. Saturday.
This created the second test water landing for NASA’s post-shuttle commercial crew program and only the third night in space history – the first in nearly 45 years.
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NASA and SpaceX plan to launch four astronauts to the International Space Station on a Falcon 9 rocket including two international crew members for the first time.
The second crew mission of the commercial spacecraft will leave Earth no earlier than April 20 from the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The SpaceX Crew Dragon spaceship will take NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough, acting as spacecraft commander, and Megan McArthur, pilot, to the ISS.
They will be joined by European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Thomas Pesquet and Akihiko Hoshide from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
This will be only the second time astronauts have launched from a commercial spacecraft and flown in a non-government backed spaceship to the ISS.