{"id":121026,"date":"2021-05-02T14:12:33","date_gmt":"2021-05-02T06:12:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=121026"},"modified":"2021-05-02T14:12:34","modified_gmt":"2021-05-02T06:12:34","slug":"astronauts-leave-iss-begin-return-journey-to-earth-on-spacex-craft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=121026","title":{"rendered":"Astronauts leave ISS, begin return journey to Earth on SpaceX craft"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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WASHINGTON, May 2 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Four astronauts left the International Space Station on Saturday aboard a SpaceX vessel, after more than 160 days in space which will culminate in a splash landing off the Florida coast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Crew Dragon capsule undocked from the ISS as scheduled at 8:35 pm (0035 Sunday GMT). With the flight back to Earth expected to take six-and-a-half hours, the crew was scheduled to splash down in the dark off Panama City, Florida, in the Gulf of Mexico at 2:57 am (0657 GMT).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seven astronauts remained on the ISS including a new crew of four who arrived on a different SpaceX craft last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SpaceX boats are expected to reach the capsule about 10 minutes after splashdown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and Japan\u2019s Soichi Noguchi went to space last November as the crew on the first fully operational mission to the ISS aboard a vehicle made by Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX, which has become NASA\u2019s favored commercial transportation partner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prior to that, two American astronauts made a test mission to the ISS in May and stayed for two months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was the first launch to the ISS from US soil since the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011. It was also the first crewed mission run by a private company, as opposed to NASA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until then US astronauts had caught rides to the ISS aboard Russian spacecraft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The four astronauts who left Saturday \u2014 their mission was called Crew-1 \u2014 will splash down in the same capsule in which they traveled into space in November. With them are freezers with samples from zero-gravity scientific experiments they conducted aboard the ISS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Tuesday, departing astronaut Walker handed over command of the ISS to a member of the newly arrived crew, Akihiko Hoshide of Japan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end the departing astronauts spent 168 days aboard the ISS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The departure was initially scheduled for Wednesday but postponed twice due to forecasts of bad weather at the splash down site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Besides the new crew of four, the ISS is still home to another American and two Russians. — NNN-AGENCIES<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON, May 2 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Four astronauts left the International Space Station on Saturday aboard a SpaceX vessel, after more than 160 days in space which will culminate in a splash landing off the Florida coast. The Crew Dragon capsule undocked from the ISS as scheduled at 8:35 pm (0035 Sunday GMT). With the flight […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":121030,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[208,215,209],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121026"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=121026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/121030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=121026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=121026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=121026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}