SpaceX mission: astronauts return home after six months on the International Space Station

New York (CNN Business) – Four astronauts landed on the Florida coast aboard their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, culminating their six-month stay in space.

Their journey began on Monday shortly after 2 p.m. ET when the astronauts boarded the Crew Dragon capsule, which had been attached to the International Space Station (ISS) since it arrived with the crew in April. The spacecraft spent nearly nine hours slowly maneuvering through orbit, closing in on the thick inner layer of Earth’s atmosphere before Crew Dragon fired up its thrusters to safely slice through the air, deploy parachutes, and land in the Gulf. from Mexico around 10:30 pm on Monday.

A fleet of rescue ships awaited his arrival and took the four astronauts – NASA’s Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, the European Space Agency’s French astronaut Thomas Pesquet, and Japan’s Akihiko Hoshide – to safety.

“It’s great to be back on planet Earth,” Kimbrough was heard saying moments after landing on NASA’s webcast.

During their time in space, Kimbrough, McArthur, Pesquet, and Hoshide supervised numerous scientific experiments and even tested the first chili peppers grown in space. They also went on spacewalks, donning the iconic white suits to exit the space station and work on its exterior, and endured some harrowing challenges, such as overcoming the misfire of a new Russian module that was attached to the ISS and briefly knocked her out of position.

The journey home presented one final challenge: Toilet problems aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule left astronauts without a toilet option on their journey home. Instead, the crew was forced to rely on “underwear,” essentially adult diapers, during the nine-hour voyage.

During a press conference held remotely from the ISS on Friday, McArthur said wearing underwear instead of the toilet is “suboptimal.”

“But we are prepared to cope,” he said. “Spaceflight is full of many small challenges. This is just one more that we will encounter and deal with on our mission, so we are not too concerned about that.”

Kimbrough, McArthur, Pesquet and Hoshide returned to Earth before the next crew of astronauts could arrive on the ISS to replace them.

The goal of the NASA and SpaceX partnership for their joint missions on the ISS is to keep the 21-year-old space station fully staffed, making the most of the orbiting laboratory while in operation. Keeping enough personnel on board was a constant pressure on NASA during the nearly 10 years that the United States did not have a spacecraft capable of putting astronauts into orbit. After the space agency’s space shuttle program was withdrawn, it had to rely on its partnership with Russia and the Soyuz spacecraft to get NASA astronauts to the space station.

The next launch of a SpaceX astronaut, named Crew-3, was delayed, first because of weather problems and then because of a “minor medical problem” with one of the astronauts. NASA said last week that it expects the medical problem to go away before liftoff, which could happen as soon as Wednesday.

NASA also hopes to bring another launch provider on board: Boeing was contracted with SpaceX to develop its own crew-worthy spacecraft, but Boeing has been beset by numerous testing and development problems. At this point, his spacecraft, named the Starliner, is years behind schedule and was most recently removed from the launch pad after problems with its propulsion system were discovered shortly before a scheduled test flight of the vehicle.