The four crew members have successfully returned from the Crew-3 mission

Miami, May 6 (EFE). The four members of the Crew-3 mission returned to Earth early Friday from the International Space Station (ISS), after successfully reaching the waters of the Gulf of Mexico near the coast of Florida (USA).

The Dragon capsule, which the crew dubbed Endurance, abandoned at about 00:43 local time (4:43 GMT), and soon after began to board the rescue boats waiting for them at sea.

NASA astronauts Kayla Baron, Raja Chari and Tom Marshburn, as well as European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Matthias Maurer, capped off this nearly 24-hour flight of nearly six months in the orbiting laboratory where they arrived last November 11. public.

Mission leader Marshburn made his third spaceflight with this mission, while the other three members made their first spaceflight thanks to Crew-3, which, as its name indicates, is the third operational manned flight that SpaceX has sent to the ISS on behalf of NASA.

All of them have developed over a hundred science projects over this time, as well as three spacewalks; Barron and Shari twice each, while Marshbourne and Maurer both walked.

In addition to walking tours to replace the station’s solar panels, mission members conducted various investigations, including some that examined complex planting and germination processes, the results of which will be useful for long-term space travel in the future.

Before returning from this mission, Marchborn on Wednesday handed command of Expedition 67 on the International Space Station to Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev in a short and symbolic ceremony in which he emphasized that the work being done on the station saves lives and improves human presence.

The NASA commander took the opportunity to highlight that the ISS’s “legacy” is “international cooperation in a peaceful world,” a sentiment shared by the Russian cosmonaut, who arrived at the station in March.

“Thank you for your friendship,” said Artemyev, before joining Marchburne in a hug.

Expedition members return home after relief for Crew-4, whose crew arrived at the orbiting laboratory aboard a new Dragon capsule, which they have dubbed Freedom, on April 27 for another shift of nearly six months at the station.

Crew-4 consists of NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Robert Hines and Jessica Watkins, as well as Italian Samantha Cristoforetti, of the European Space Agency (ESA), who arrived in the middle of a particularly active season for the International Space Station.

Crew-4 members joined Expedition 67 just three days after the return of Ax-1 to Earth, the first entirely private mission to reach the space station that was piloted by former Hispanic NASA astronaut Miguel Lopez Alegria.

Coordinated by a private company based in Houston (USA), Axium Space, the Ax-1 took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and on April 9 arrived at the International Space Station, where its four-man crew spent two weeks conducting scientific research.

On May 19, Boeing plans to launch the Orbital Flight-2 (OFT-2) test mission from Cape Canaveral, Florida and on an Atlas V rocket, the second of its kind, which the private company hopes to do. She successfully sent her Starliner to the International Space Station. EFE

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