Astronauts Return To Earth After 5 Months At The International Space Station

Their SpaceX capsule parachuted into the Pacific off the Southern California coast a day after departing the orbiting lab.

Splashing down had been NASA’s Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan’s Takuya Onishi and Russia’s Kirill Peskov. They launched in March as replacements for the 2 NASA astronauts assigned to Starliner’s botched demo.

Starliner malfunctions stored Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on the house station for greater than 9 months as a substitute of every week. NASA ordered Boeing’s new crew capsule to return empty and switched the pair to SpaceX. They left quickly after McClain and her crew arrived to take their locations. Wilmore has since retired from NASA.

Earlier than leaving the house station on Friday, McClain made notice of “some tumultuous occasions on Earth” with individuals struggling.

“We wish this mission, our mission, to be a reminder of what individuals can do once we work collectively, once we discover collectively,” she mentioned.

McClain appeared ahead to “doing nothing for a few days” as soon as again dwelling in Houston. Excessive on her crewmates’ want checklist: sizzling showers and juicy burgers.

It was SpaceX’s third Pacific splashdown with individuals on board, however the first for a NASA crew in 50 years. Elon Musk’s firm switched capsule returns from Florida to California’s coast earlier this yr to scale back the chance of particles falling on populated areas. Again-to-back personal crews had been the primary to expertise Pacific homecomings.

The final time NASA astronauts returned to the Pacific from house was throughout the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission, a détente meet-up of Individuals and Soviets in orbit.

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