The crew of the Crew-5 mission sent into space by a SpaceX rocket on behalf of NASA returned to earth on Saturday, according to images from the American agency. The four astronauts spent five months on the International Space Station (ISS).
The ‘Endurance’ capsule landed in the Gulf of Mexico shortly following 9:00 p.m. local time (3:00 a.m. in Switzerland) off the west coast of Florida, with Japanese Koichi Wakata on board, Russian Anna Kikina, as well as Nicole Mann and NASA’s Josh Cassada.
Crew-5, launched from Cape Canaveral last October, was Koichi Wakata’s fifth space mission and the first for the other members, allowing Nicole Mann to become the first Native American woman sent into space.
Crew-6
Before leaving the ISS, the crew met that of Crew-6, which left on March 1 from the same place in Florida to take over.
Less than a week earlier, a Russian Soyuz rocket lifted off from Kazakhstan to replace the MS-22 spacecraft, also Russian, which was damaged while docking with the ISS.
The three members of MS-22, an American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts, were originally due to return to earth at the end of March following a six-month mission, but will ultimately stay for almost a year.
Cooperation in the International Space Station has become one of the last areas where Washington and Moscow continue to work together since Russia invaded Ukraine just over a year ago.
/ATS
