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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. , May 6 (AP) \u2014 SpaceX brought four astronauts home with a midnight splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico on Friday, capping the busiest stretch yet for Elon Musk\u2019s taxi service.<\/p>\n
The three U.S. astronauts and one German in the capsule were bobbing off the Florida coast, near Tampa, less than 24 hours after leaving the International Space Station. NASA expected to have them back in Houston later in the morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was a great ride,\u201d said Raja Chari, the capsule commander. As for the reintroduction to gravity, he noted: \u201cOnly one complaint. These water bottles are super heavy.\u201d<\/p>\n
NASA\u2019s Chari, Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron, and the European Space Agency\u2019s Matthias Maurer, were out of the capsule within an hour of splashdown, waving and giving thumbs-up as they were hustled away on rolling chaises for medical checks.<\/p>\n
Their departure from the space station Thursday was bittersweet, as they embraced the seven astronauts remaining there.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the end of a six-month mission, but I think the space dream lives on,\u201d Maurer said.<\/p>\n
SpaceX brought up their U.S. and Italian replacements last week, after completing a charter trip to the station for a trio of businessmen earlier in April.<\/p>\n
That amounts to two crew launches and two splashdowns in barely a month. Musk\u2019s company has now launched 26 people into orbit in less than two years, since it started ferrying astronauts for NASA. Eight of those 26 were space tourists.<\/p>\n
SpaceX\u2019s William Gerstenmaier, a vice president, acknowledges it\u2019s \u201ca pretty exciting time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barely five hours after splashdown, the company founded by Musk in 2002 launched a fresh batch of its own internet satellites known as Starlinks from Cape Canaveral. There were 53 of the mini flat-panel satellites in this predawn load.<\/p>\n
\u201cSatellites are nice, but flying people are a little special and a little bit different, and the team here sure understands that,\u201d he told reporters. \u201cThere\u2019s a sense of relief and and a sense of accomplishment that you know you\u2019ve done something good.\u201d<\/p>\n
NASA is more impressed than ever, given SpaceX\u2019s unprecedented pace. The only problem of note in the latest flight was a mechanical nut that wiggled loose and floated away from the SpaceX capsule following Thursday\u2019s undocking. Officials assured everyone it would not pose a danger to the space station.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook at all this work in the last month,\u201d said Kathy Lueders, NASA\u2019s space operations mission chief. \u201cI really want to personally thank SpaceX for just, wow, just performing such seamless operations on all those missions.\u201d<\/p>\n
The astronauts said their mission was highlighted by the three visitors and their ex-astronaut escort who dropped by in April, opening up NASA\u2019s side of the station to paying guests after decades of resistance.<\/p>\n
On the down side, they had to contend with a dangerous spike in space junk after Russia blew up a satellite in a missile test in mid-November. More than 1,500 pieces of shrapnel spread across Earth\u2019s orbit for years to come.<\/p>\n
While the war in Ukraine has caused tensions between the U.S. and Russia, the astronauts have stood by their Russian crewmates, and vice versa. Flight controllers in Houston and Moscow also continued to cooperate as always, according to NASA officials.<\/p>\n
As he relinquished command of the space station earlier this week, Marshburn called it \u201ca place of peace\u201d and said international cooperation would likely be its lasting legacy. Russian Oleg Artemyev, the new commander, also emphasized the \u201cpeace between our countries, our friendship\u201d in orbit and described his crewmates as brothers and sisters.<\/p>\n
Up there now are three Russians, three Americans and one Italian.<\/p>\n
It was Marshburn\u2019s third spaceflight, and the first for the three returning with him. Chari and Barron\u2019s next stop could be the moon; they are among 18 U.S. astronauts picked for NASA\u2019s Artemis moon-landing program. Two others in that elite group are now at the space station.<\/p>\n
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. , May 6 (AP) \u2014 SpaceX brought four astronauts home with a midnight splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico on Friday, capping the busiest stretch yet for Elon Musk\u2019s taxi service. The three U.S. astronauts and one German in the capsule were bobbing off the Florida coast, near Tampa, less than 24 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-190372","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190372\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}