The SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft took off from the International Space Station on Saturday with two American astronauts on board, beginning its journey back to Earth despite a storm threatening Florida. NASA images showed the capsule slowly drifting away from the ISS in the darkness of space, ending a two-month stay for the first US astronauts to reach the laboratory in orbit on an American spacecraft in nearly a decade.
“And they left!” The US space agency tweeted, with Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken set to splash on Sunday.
“(They) will spend one more night in space before returning to their homeland, Earth,” NASA tweeted.
Its proposed splash sites are off the west coast of Florida, while Tropical Storm Isaias is heading toward the state’s east coast.
NASA chose to take the couple home despite the threat from Isaías, which was downgraded to a tropical storm by a hurricane on Saturday.
The agency later added that the capsule was confirmed to be “on a safe trajectory.”
“Now is the entry, descent, and splash phase after we undock, hopefully, a little later today,” Hurley said at a farewell ceremony aboard the ISS that aired on NASA television.
“The teams are working very hard, especially with the weather dynamics in the coming days in Florida,” he said.
Earlier, during the ISS ceremony, Behnken said, “The hardest part was getting us launched. But the most important part is getting us home.”
Addressing her son and Hurley’s son, he picked up a toy dinosaur that the children chose to send on the mission and said, “Tremor The Apatosaurus will be heading home soon and will be with his parents.”
Behnken then tweeted, “All my bags are packed, I’m ready to go.”
‘Exciting day’
Mission Chief Chris Cassidy called it an “exciting day” and praised the importance of having a new means of transporting astronauts.
The mission, which exploded on May 30, marked the first time that a manned spacecraft had been in orbit from US soil since 2011 when the space shuttle program ended.
It was also the first time that a private company has flown to the ISS with astronauts.
The United States has paid SpaceX and aerospace giant Boeing a total of approximately $ 7 billion for their “space taxi” contracts.
But the Boeing program has failed long after a failed test conducted late last year, which left SpaceX, a company founded only in 2002, as a clear favorite.
For the past nine years, American astronauts traveled exclusively on Russian Soyuz rockets, priced at around $ 80 million per seat.
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