After spending 157 days in the space, NASA Crew-5 astronauts have recently splashed down back to planet earth in a SpaceX’s Dragon aircraft. This was NASA’s fifth commercial crew rotation mission in collaboration with SpaceX.
The Crew-5 mission included two US astronauts of NASA, one astronaut from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and one cosmonaut from the Roscosmos, the space corporation of the Russian Federation. Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada were the astronauts from United States, Koichi Wakata was from JAXA and the Ana Kikina was the cosmonaut from the Roscosmos.
On October 5, 2022 12:00 PM EDT the Crew-5 mission rocket was launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Station in Florida. It took 17 hours for the Dragon Aircraft to dock with the ISS. The journey to return home was started on Saturday, March 11, 2023 at 2:20 AM with the undocking of SpaceX Dragon Spacecraft. The Dragon splashed down at 9:02 PM EST in the ocean near the coast of Tampa, Florida.
These missions are meant for transporting the astronauts from different space agencies to the ISS for science experiments in space, technology demonstrations from ISS and needed maintenance work of Space Station itself and its different modules or even the equipment.
This same Dragon Spacecraft was used to transport the NASA SpaceX Crew-3 members to ISS and back, now the same Spacecraft is used second time to transport the Crew-5 members in both directions.
Few days back, in another SpaceX Dragon spacecraft the NASA Crew-6 members were transported ISS, the dragon spacecraft which transported the Crew-6 members to ISS, is currently docked to ISS, it will be transporting back same Crew-6 members, after it completes somewhere around 180 days (6 months) at ISS.
After splashdown of a SpaceX Crew Dragon happens successfully in the ocean, it is always loaded to a ship and then the astronauts’ egress takes place, right on the ship, from the Dragon Spacecraft. Each astronaut comes out of spacecraft and the first medical checkup is done on him her soon after, that starts the process of wider checkups etc.
About SpaceX
For those who do not have an idea, SpaceX is a private entity, based in United States and provides payed space transportation services to clients around the world. The clients of SpaceX include governments as well as private organizations from around the world. The missions of SpaceX include crewed missions as well as resupply missions to International Space Station (ISS). Resupply missions to ISS are to supply equipments and other supplies to ISS.
SpaceX also provides the services to put the satellites in different orbits, to the clients around the world. Also some space missions are planned and executed for putting up the satellites for the SpaceX’s own Starlink satellite internet which targets the clients in far flung areas, not reachable due to difficult terrain. Starlink is not only directly provide the broadband internet and data services to customers in remote areas of the world, they also are striking different deals with telecom providers in different parts of the world.
Among many others, one such deal was done between SpaceX and Salt telecom network of Switzerland for providing the voice and data services via Starlink satellites on remote locations of Switzerland with difficult terrain, make it hard to reach via land infrastructure.