Four astronauts returned to Earth on Saturday after heading to International Space Station (EEI) five months ago to relieve the stars of the starlliner of the Starliner of Boeing.
Its capsule of Spacex He landed in the Pacific Ocean off the southern coast of California one day after starting the orbital laboratory.
“Welcome home,” Spacex mission control transmitted by radio.
They landed Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (POT), Takuya Onishi of Japan and Kirill Peskov of Russia. They were launched in March as replacements of the two NASA astronauts assigned to the failed demonstration of the Starliner.
Starliner failures kept Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams at the space station for more than nine months instead of a week. NASA ordered that Boeing’s new crew capsule returned empty and changed both astronauts. They left shortly after McClain and their crew arrived to occupy their places. Wilmore has retired from NASA since then.
Before leaving the space station on Friday, McClain mentioned “a tumultuous period on Earth” that people face.
“We want this mission, our mission, to be a reminder of what people can do when we work together, when we explore together,” he said.
McClain was looking forward to “doing nothing for a couple of days” once back at home in Houston. In the list of wishes of his crew companions: hot and juicy hamburgers.
It was the third amegaging in the Pacific of Spacex with people on board, but the first for a NASA crew in 50 years. Elon Musk’s company changed the returns of Florida capsules to the Coast of California earlier this year to reduce the risk that debris falling into populated areas. Consecutive private crews were the first to experience returns to the Pacific.
The last time NASA Astronauts returned to the Pacific from space was during the 1975 Apolo-Soyuz mission, a relaxation meeting between Americans and Soviet in orbit.