After spending almost six months in space, three American astronauts and a German returned to Earth on Friday aboard a SpaceX capsule, which landed off the coast of Florida.
Detached from the International Space Station (ISS), the Dragon capsule, which carried the Americans Kayla Barron, Raja Chari and Tom Marshburn, as well as the astronaut of the European Space Agency (ESA) Matthias Maurer, touched sea at 04:43 GMT after a journey of more than 23 hours.
“On behalf of the entire SpaceX team, welcome home,” said an official of the American company.
This crew, called Crew-3, spent its last days aboard the ISS carrying out the handover with Crew-4, also made up of four astronauts (three Americans and one Italian). The latter had taken off from Florida about a week ago, also with SpaceX.
Also currently on board the ISS are three Russians, who arrived for their departure with a Russian Soyuz rocket.
It was the sixth landing of a manned Dragon capsule for SpaceX, which now regularly transports astronauts to the ISS on behalf of NASA.
Matthias Maurer is the twelfth German to have flown into orbit. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz wished him on Twitter “a good return trip”, highlighting his work “and all the new discoveries made in space”.
Members of Crew-3 performed multiple scientific experiments. For example, they studied how cement hardens in weightlessness — which could be of importance for future constructions, for example on the Moon. And carried out the second harvest of peppers on board the station.
During their stay, they also received a visit from a private mission, including three businessmen, who had paid tens of millions of dollars each to spend two weeks aboard the ISS – still transported by SpaceX .