Crew-6 Returns to Earth – SpaceRef

After splashing down safely in a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida early Monday morning, NASA’s SpaceX Crew-6 achieved the corporate’s sixth enterprise crew rotation mission to the Worldwide Space Station. The worldwide crew of 4 spent 186 days in orbit.

NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, along with UAE (United Arab Emirates) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, returned to Earth at 12:17 a.m. EDT. Teams aboard SpaceX restoration vessels retrieved the spacecraft and its crew. After returning to shore, the crew will fly to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

“After spending six months aboard the Worldwide Space Station, logging nearly 79 million miles all through their mission, and ending tons of of scientific experiments for the benefit of all humanity, NASA’s SpaceX Crew-6 has returned residence to planet Earth,” talked about Administrator Bill Nelson. “This worldwide crew represented three nations, nevertheless collectively they demonstrated humanity’s shared ambition to reach new cosmic shores. The contributions of Crew-6 will help put collectively NASA to return to the Moon beneath Artemis, proceed onward to Mars, and improve life proper right here on Earth.”

The Crew-6 mission lifted off at 12:34 a.m. EST March 2, 2023, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. About 25 hours later, Dragon docked to the Harmony module’s space-facing port. On Would possibly 6, the crew achieved a port relocation maneuver to the Earth-facing port ahead of the arrival of a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft carrying new photograph voltaic arrays, science investigations, and supplies to the orbiting laboratory. The crew undocked from the home station at 7:05 a.m. Sunday, to start out the journey residence.

Bowen, Hoburg, Alneyadi, and Fedyaev traveled 78,875,292 miles all through their mission, spent 184 days aboard the home station, and achieved 2,976 orbits spherical Earth. The Crew-6 mission was the first spaceflight for Hoburg, Alneyadi, and Fedyaev. Bowen has logged 227 days in home over 4 flights.

All by means of their mission, the Crew-6 members contributed to plenty of science and maintenance actions and know-how demonstrations. Bowen carried out three spacewalks, joined by Hoburg for two, and Alneyadi for one, preparing the station for and placing in two new IROSAs (Worldwide Space Station Roll-Out Picture voltaic Arrays) to boost vitality expertise for the station.

The crew contributed to tons of of experiments and know-how demonstrations, along with serving to a scholar robotic drawback, discovering out plant genetic variations to accommodate, and monitoring human properly being in microgravity to arrange for exploration previous low Earth orbit and to revenue life on Earth. The astronauts launched Saskatchewan’s first satellite tv for pc television for laptop which exams a model new radiation detection and security system derived from melanin, found in plenty of organisms, along with folks.

This was the fourth flight of the Dragon spacecraft, which was named Endeavour by retired NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley on its first voyage for the corporate’s SpaceX Demonstration Mission 2. The spacecraft will return to Florida for inspection and processing at SpaceX’s refurbishing facility at Cape Canaveral Space Strain Station, the place teams will look at the spacecraft, analyze data on its effectivity, and put collectively it for its subsequent flight.

The Crew-6 mission is part of NASA’s Enterprise Crew Program, and its return to Earth follows on the launch of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-7, which docked to the station Aug. 27, beginning one different long-duration science expedition.

The aim of NASA’s Enterprise Crew Program is safe, reliable, and cost-effective transportation to and from the Worldwide Space Station and low Earth orbit, which maximizes evaluation time and can enhance options for discovery aboard humanity’s microgravity laboratory and testbed for exploration, along with serving to NASA put collectively for human exploration of the Moon and Mars.

Examine additional about NASA’s Enterprise Crew program at: https://www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew