Four astronauts safely returned to Earth early Monday morning after a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station.
A SpaceX capsule parachuted NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren “Woody” Hoburg, Russia’s Andrei Fedyaev, and the United Arab Emirates’ Sultan al-Neyadi into the Atlantic Ocean off the Florida coast, lighting up the darkened sky over Cape Canaveral.
Viewed from the Kennedy Space Center, the capsule resembled a slow-motion meteor as it descended from 17,100 mph to approximately 300 mph.
Welcome home, #Crew6!
After six months of science and discovery aboard the @Space_Station, our Crew-6 team splashed down at 12:17am ET (0417 UTC) and will be picked up shortly by recovery teams. pic.twitter.com/zf635dfUKF
— NASA (@NASA) September 4, 2023
@skynews Four #astronauts have splashed down near #Florida after six-month stay on the International #Space Station. Returning were NASA’s Stephen Bowen and Warren “Woody” Hoburg, Russia’s Andrei Fedyaev and the United Arab Emirates’ Sultan al-Neyadi. 🔗 Tap the link in bio for more.
“You’ve got a roomful of happy people here,” SpaceX Mission Control radioed in after the capsule touched down, according to AP News.
Their return had been postponed by a day due to poor weather conditions at the planned splashdown sites.
Hurricane Idalia made landfall in Florida last Wednesday, coinciding with a rare blue supermoon that created higher tides and more intense coastal flooding, as previously reported in The Dallas Express.
The team set to relieve the four astronauts — referred to as SpaceX Crew-6 — includes NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, Denmark’s Andreas Mogensen, Japan’s Satoshi Furukawa, and Russia’s Konstantin Borisov.
Known as SpaceX Crew-7, their launch also experienced a delay due to space junk forcing the ISS to maneuver to avoid collision, as previously reported in The Dallas Express.
The SpaceX Falcon rocket successfully departed a day later on August 26 and docked at the ISS, where the crew will conduct microgravity research over the course of the six-month mission.
“Aboard station, the crew will conduct more than 200 science experiments and technology demonstrations to prepare for missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond, all while benefitting humanity on Earth,” explained NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in a press release.
As previously covered in The Dallas Express, a new Moon race has been heating up over the suspected presence of water in the relatively underexplored South Pole region.
The discovery of water would help further plans of establishing a long-term base for conducting missions into deep space.
But now that they are back on Earth, SpaceX Crew-6 will likely be enjoying hot showers, cups of coffee, and the ocean air, which they said they had dearly missed during their six-month stint on the ISS, after passing medical checks, according to AP News.
During their six-month stint, the crew aboard the ISS circled the Earth 2,976 times and covered 78.9 million miles in space.
“This has been incredible,” Bowen said, according to USA Today. “Greatly appreciated. I look forward to working with you all again.”
This was the 11th manned spaceflight mission conducted by SpaceX and the eighth with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
