The SpaceX Dragon capsule separated this Sunday from the International Space Station (ISS) with the four crew members of NASA’s Crew-6 mission inside and began its journey to the coast of Florida.
As planned, Dragon Endurance separated at 7:05 a.m. ET from the Harmony module and is expected to reach the coast of Tampa, west Florida, around 12:07 p.m. Monday, September 4.
The return trip comes after being postponed one day due to bad weather forecast in the landing zone and marks the end of a six-month mission to the ISS for the crew.
Crew-6 members are NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen (mission commander) and pilot Woody Hoburg; United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Alneyadi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.
Shortly before the separation, Bowen told mission controllers that it had been a “privilege and an honor” to be part of this expedition. “We are approaching 23 years of continuous occupation of the International Space Station, which is absolutely amazing and it has been a real privilege to be a part of it,” he said.
After taking off on March 2 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida (USA), and docking the next day at the ISS, the Crew-6 crew has carried out scientific research and maintenance tasks at the so-called orbital laboratory during this time.
“We welcomed the visiting Axiom (commercial mission) crew on board, did three spacewalks…, did a lot of maintenance, and we hope to leave the space station a little better than we found it,” Hoburg said this week. , during a farewell ceremony.
The members of this mission have lived briefly with the crew of Crew-7, which on August 27 fitted into the ISS with its four crew members and temporarily populated the space station with 11 occupants.
Crew-7 will also complete a six-month mission and is commanded by NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli and Andreas Mogensen, from the European Space Agency (ESA), as well as Satoshi Furukawa, from the Japanese agency JAXA, and Konstantin Borisov, of the Russian Roscosmos.
EFE
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