The first mission of SpaceX’s newest Dragon crew capsule couldn’t be more seamless.
spacecraft, named FreedomSpaceX’s Crew-4 astronaut flew its mission to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA and concluded with a flight on Friday afternoon (October 14). splash in the atlantic ocean Off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida.
NASA and SpaceX representatives said that freedom’s return to Earth works like clockwork, as with almost any mission.
Related: Spectacular photos of SpaceX’s Crew-4 mission
Sarah Walker, director of SpaceX, said, “From my point of view, watching these five and a half months of vehicle data was tedious when the crew had to do all the exciting work on the ISS.” Dragon task management said at a post-splash press conference Friday evening.
“That’s exactly how we like it,” Walker added. “The Freedom car has performed well the entire time and especially today on the return day.”
Crew-4 takes off atop SpaceX Falcon 9 The rocket that carried NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines and Jessica Watkins and the European Space Agency’s Samantha Cristoforetti to the orbiting laboratory on April 27.
Freedom arrived at the ISS the same day, and crew members quickly got to work. Crew-4 astronauts “completed more than 250 studies and completed some of our work in the areas of human research technology demonstrations we will need for exploration. commercialization activities in low Earth orbitJoel Montalbano, NASA’s ISS program manager, said at a press conference Friday evening.
The spaceplanes’ return trip to Earth on Friday was also notable, and not just for its smoothness: The Liberty bounced down less than five hours after leaving the ISS.
“This was actually the fastest turnaround we’ve ever done on a crew mission – on any mission,” Walker said.
SpaceX still has a mission on the ISS and will continue for a while; four-person The crew arrived on 5 October. 6 in Dragon Endurance, which also flew the company’s Crew-3 mission.
Like Crew-5, Crew-6 will use a veteran Dragon capsule. This mission, scheduled to launch next spring, will fly aboard the spacecraft Endeavour, Steve Stich, director of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said at Friday’s briefing.
Endeavor, SpaceX’s first astronaut mission Demo-2 Flight to the ISS in 2020, as well as Crew-2 and Axiom SpaceX’s Ax-1 flight. lasting 17 days ax-1It was the first fully private crewed mission to the space station, which took place in April of this year.
Mike Wall”Outside (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or he Facebook (opens in new tab).
