Four astronauts returned safely to Earth from the International Space Station early on Sunday in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, parachuting to splash-down in the Gulf of Mexico, NASA said.
Their homecoming marked the end of the first crew rotation mission to the station by the Crew Dragon spacecraft
Their homecoming marked the end of the first crew rotation mission to the station by the Crew Dragon spacecraft, developed in partnership between NASA and Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX, the agency said in a statement.
Splashdown! The @SpaceX Crew Dragon, Resilience, lands in the Gulf of Mexico after undocking from @Space_Station with Crew-1 @NASA_Astronauts @AstroVicGlover, @Astro_illini, and Shannon Walker, and @JAXA_en Soichi Noguchi. More photos coming: 📷https://t.co/pJxSDC6QsN pic.twitter.com/IoMaemqSlz
— NASA HQ PHOTO (@nasahqphoto) May 2, 2021
The crew – NASA’s Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, and Japan’s Soichi Noguchi – had launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on November 15, propelled by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The capsule, dubbed Resilience by the crew, splashed down in darkness off the coast of Panama City, Florida.
The mission was part of NASA’s fledgling public-private partnership with SpaceX, the rocket company founded in 2002 by Musk, who is also CEO of electric car maker Tesla.
✅ Mission complete! @Astro_illini, @AstroVicGlover, Shannon Walker and @Astro_Soichi splashed down off the Florida coast at 2:56 a.m. ET. Tune in at 5 a.m. ET for a post-splashdown news conference: https://t.co/A9sbAYbCl3 https://t.co/4yjbdWOrNJ
— NASA's Kennedy Space Center (@NASAKennedy) May 2, 2021
The mission marks the second “operational” space station team to be launched by NASA aboard a Dragon Crew capsule since the United States resumed flying astronauts into space from US soil last year, following a nine-year hiatus at the end of the US space shuttle program in 2011.
