Space News reports that SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft “splashed down off the Florida coast Feb. 9, wrapping up a three-week private astronaut mission to the International Space Station. The Crew Dragon spacecraft Freedom splashed down at 8:30 a.m. Eastern off the coast from Daytona Beach, Florida, concluding the Ax-3 mission for Axiom Space.”
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Ax-3 Crew Dragon splashdown
(SciNews; YouTube)
CNN reported that the four astronauts “who make up the Crew-5 team aboard the International Space Station returned home from a five-month stay in space Saturday, splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico.” The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule “disembarked from the space station at 2:20 am ET, beginning the final leg of the astronauts’ journey.” The spacecraft “then maneuvered back toward Earth before plunging back into the atmosphere for a landing off the coast of Tampa, Florida[,] just after 9 p.m. ET Saturday.” The capsule was hauled out of the ocean by rescue ships and the astronauts then got to breath fresh air for the first time in five months. The four crew members – NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, astronaut Koichi Wakata of JAXA, and cosmonaut Anna Kikina of the Russian space agency Roscosmos – “launched to the space station aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule this past October.”
Full Story (CNN)
Dragon and Crew-5 NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, along with JAXA astronaut Koichi Wakata, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina splash down off the Florida coast at 9:02 p.m. ET on Saturday, March 11, after 157 days in space.
(SpaceX; YouTube)
SPACE reports that the Dragon CRS-24 “cargo ship splashed down today (Jan. 24) in the Atlantic Ocean at 4:05 p.m. EST (2105 GMT), off the coast of Florida near Panama City.” The SpaceX cargo ship “returned nearly 5,000 pounds (2,267 kilograms) of science to Earth, including a ‘cytoskeleton’ that studies cell signaling in humans, and returning a 12-year-old light imaging microscope being retired after more than a decade of use in orbit.”
Full Story (SPACE)