NASA, ESA Astronauts Safely Return to Earth
HOUSTON (NASA PR) — NASA’s SpaceX Crew-3 astronauts aboard the Dragon Endurance spacecraft safely splashed down Friday in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida, completing the agency’s third long-duration commercial crew mission to the International Space Station. The international crew of four spent 177 days in orbit.
NASA astronauts Kayla Barron, Raja Chari, and Tom Marshburn, and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Matthias Maurer returned to Earth in a parachute-assisted splashdown at 12:43 a.m. EDT. Teams aboard SpaceX recovery vessels recovered the spacecraft and astronauts. After returning to shore, the astronauts will fly back to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“NASA’s partnership with SpaceX has again empowered us to deliver a crew safely to the space station and back, enabling groundbreaking science that will help our astronauts travel farther out into the cosmos than ever before. This mission is just one more example that we are truly in the golden era of commercial spaceflight,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Kayla, Raja, Tom, and Matthias, thank you for your service and welcome home!”
The Crew-3 mission launched Nov. 10 on a Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Nearly 24-hours after liftoff, Nov. 11, Endurance docked to the Harmony module’s forward space station port. The astronauts undocked from the same port at 1:05 a.m. May 5, to begin the trip home.
Barron, Chari, Marshburn, and Maurer traveled 75,060,792 miles during their mission, spent 175 days aboard the space station, and completed 2,832 orbits around Earth. Marshburn has logged 339 days in space over his three flights. The Crew-3 mission was the first spaceflight for Barron, Chari, and Marshburn.
Throughout their mission, the Crew-3 astronauts contributed to a host of science and maintenance activities and technology demonstrations. In addition, they conducted three spacewalks to perform station maintenance and upgrades outside the space station. This brought the total number of spacewalks for Marshburn to five, while Chari and Barron have each completed two, and Maurer one.
Crew-3 built on previous work investigating how fibers grow in microgravity, used hydroponic and aeroponic techniques to grow plants without soil or other growth material, captured imagery of their retinas as part of an investigation that could detect eye changes of astronauts in space automatically in the future, and performed a demonstration of technology that provides measurements of biological indicators related to disease and infection, among many other scientific investigations. The astronauts took hundreds of photos of Earth as part of the Crew Earth Observation investigation, one of the longest-running investigations aboard the space station, which helps track natural disasters and changes to our home planet.
Endurance will return to Florida for inspection and processing at SpaceX’s Dragon Lair, where teams will examine the spacecraft’s data and performance throughout the flight.
The Crew-3 flight is part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program and its return to Earth follows on the heels of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 launch, which docked to the station April 27, beginning another science expedition.
The goal of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program is safe, reliable, and cost-effective transportation to and from the International Space Station. This already has provided additional research time and has increased the opportunity for discovery aboard humanity’s microgravity testbed for exploration, including helping NASA prepare for human exploration of the Moon and Mars.
25 responses to “NASA, ESA Astronauts Safely Return to Earth”
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Congratulations to SpaceX for another successful mission.
Also, even though it is no longer newsworthy as it is so routine, Congratulations on another successful Starlink launch.
Yep, recovering returning astronauts and launching satellites at the same time, showing SpaceX’s multi-tasking ability.?
This post was not about Starlink.
That sky full of space junk and slow-motion disaster is not something to praise at all.
Yes, so successful that it is no longer news.
Yes, successful congratulations to all the Musk fans endlessly advertising for him on the public forums they have hijacked for years. Ayn-Rand-in-Space libertarian propaganda for the Trump of space.
90 successful landings. Match the Shuttle record early next year barring problems.
“Maybe we can all take a few days of rest,” Lueders added.
No rest for you Kathy as long as those hypergolic abort systems are endangering crews. You need to get rid of those and put escape towers on those capsules.
No comparison with the shuttle, which was huge and landed like an airplane.
…No comparison with the shuttle, which was huge and landed like an airplane…
True. But can’t we at least give Kathy the weekend off?
It is funny how they compare everything to the hobby rocket and toxic dragon. The Shuttle was more reusable than the F9. And spacex just had to get rid of the escape tower on the capsule concept and thus ruin it. Kathy knows both the starliner and toxic dragon are bad designs.
I sure was sorry to see the shuttle program end. But the general agreement seemed to be that it was just another disaster waiting to happen. And I was happy to see that they were going to morph many of its parts into SLS. But it sure has turned into an apparent cluster-flock over the years. I’d still enjoy seeing it hook up with Gateway in the not-too-distant future. But I don’t think NASA can afford it over the long run.
You have been brainwashed by spacex propaganda. Human-rated Super Heavy Lift Vehicles with upper stages going to the Moon and back…..not cheap. Most of the problems with SLS follow the Space Shuttle in that most of the problems with the Space Shuttle were because they went cheap. And like many things, they ended up paying more and finally had nothing in the end except a requirement to continue Human Space Flight.
The whole ideology of NewSpace is flawed and toxic to space exploration. The salient feature that makes it a scam is there is no ROI on Human Space Flight. But the Ayn-Rand-in-Space cyber-legion of whackjobs has screamed at the top of their lungs and harassed all critics into silence so everyone now thinks space can be made to pay for itself. Which was often heard when the Shuttle was being introduced. See how that works?
As for being “sorry” about the Shuttle…I was absolutely not sorry to see it go at all. It could only go a couple hundred miles up and wasted the lift of a Saturn V class vehicle on a 737-size glider. It was never a good design. Like the shiny.
Were you sorry to see the Constellation program get canned?
I try to look at it critically and not get emotionally invested in this stuff P.K. Unlike the spacex fanboys who are essentially in a pseudo-cult. But I have to admit when they murdered Sidemount I felt like it was the end of the dream. Sidemount would have very quickly had us going back to the Moon and would have removed the Orbiter and replaced it with a capsule and escape tower. It was beautiful. And NewSpace did that in with their cheaper-smaller-is-better pitch. I will never forgive them for that. What garbage. At the time they were all about the Falcon 9 being able to do everything and nothing else was needed and NASA should be dismantled, and it all handed over to rocket jesus because only he can save us. This was 10 years ago so it has been going on for a decade. The damage has been immeasurable. NewSpace is the worst thing that has ever happened to space exploration, worse than both Shuttle disasters. And the damage is accumulating. The flagship company has a repackaged Saturn I using engine designs paid for with taxdollars and also landing back which was also a technique paid for with tax dollars and….that is about it. The shiny is quite a toy and Starlink is quite a scam but I don’t see either one working. And as for NASA not being able to afford it….the DOD created the trump force and gave it about the same budget just to play toy soldier with hordes of satellites. What a mess.
Yeah. I remember that “SpaceX is good…NASA is bad”nonsense going around about ten years ago. I must agree that those nuts were pretty cult-like. But even Elon readily admits that NASA probably saved his company in its darkest hour.
And in return SpaceX was able to make COTS and CCP success stories for NASA, and basically save the ISS by freeing it from its dependence on the Russians and Boeing. Something the NASA huggers have never gotten around to telling Elon Musk thank you for.
Yup. Not a lot of love there.
See what I mean? Dozens of them like that and once in a while they show their true colors. It is a bizarro libertarian cult that is, at its base, anti- government, anti-tax, anti-NASA, and…anti-American. Musk is the Trump of space and both of them are dangers to democracy.
He mentioned SLS Huggers, which I thought was a pretty good line.
On the other hand, I like your Trump of Space line.
I’m all for keeping the conversations going.
Well then please keep commenting here because I am going to stay away from spacex news. I have emailed the editor several times about being trolled and flagged by the spacex fanboys and received no answer. I take that as a “this is a spacex infomercial and it is fine if they disappear your comments.”
The thng is that spacex fanboys have hijacked almost all these forums, chasing any critics away years ago, and flood them with their adverts, with zero tolerance for anyone exposing their wacky cult. It IS a cult. Everyone is so conditioned to this now that when somebody does criticize rocket jesus and they are maliciously cyberstalked and harassed for it…..it seems normal. I am not saying anything different than what they say about NASA and SLS and anything not spacex really. They are a legion of demons.
I should do motion comics, “The Legion of Space Demons.” You know how to do a motion comic P.K.?
I am happy to expose them; hopefully some people read these comments and realize that space is not NewSpace and these proto-fascist creatures are not space exploration and are evil. Many of them are borderline sociopaths and a few, like se jones and TomDPerkins, are probably full-blown psychopaths. They scare me.
I had to google up Motion Comics. If you ever do “The Legion of Space Demons”, I’d love to check it out.
lol we should all bow to St. Elon
Well he did build the trampoline to reach the ISS while Boeing failed. ?
I like it!
“P.K. – He put the Naughty in Astronaut.”
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Wow. I thought we could not post pics here anymore. At least they don’t present without clicking on them like they used to. That is what spacex fanboys have been doing to me for years…..posting these giant mocking cartoons or pictures meant to humiliate me. Really disgusting.
You can tell I am not bitter about it though.
I am not even going to ask if that is really you P,K.
Hey! I’m not the kind of girl to show and tell.