SpaceX’s terribly busy year continues with the fall of astronauts

The crew of this mission, called Crew-3, left the ISS in the early hours of Thursday morning and spent more than 20 hours in orbit on board the 13-foot-wide capsule before diving back into the atmosphere and parachuting. . landing on water.

The four astronauts on the Crew-3 mission are NASA’s Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron, as well as German ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer.

After the capsule landed safely, swaying up and down the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida, Chari told mission control, “Thank you for allowing us to take [Crew Dragon] Shakedown cruise endurance. “

“I look forward to seeing many more Endurance flights in the future,” he said, using the name “Endurance” given to the Crew-3 capsule. “It was a great trip. I enjoyed working with the NASA and SpaceX team. Thanks for taking us to the space station and back safely. ”

This will mark the completion of SpaceX’s third operational mission to the ISS, which the company conducted in partnership with NASA.

SpaceX had a stormy month of activity. It began with the launch of the private AX-1 mission to the ISS on April 8, and the company returned the crew home only last week. SpaceX then launched the Crew-4 astronauts, which will replace the Crew-3 astronauts in ISS personnel, last Wednesday, after which it immediately began preparing for the return of the Crew-3. Meanwhile, the company’s Falcon 9 rocket launched satellites into orbit, including a batch of Starlink Internet satellites, just last Friday.

SpaceX has already recorded 17 launches so far in 2022, making it the busiest first five months of the year in SpaceX history. And they are still on the way, as two more Starlink launches are planned for the next five days.

The goal of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon program was to bring astronauts back into the United States for the first time since the withdrawal of NASA’s Space Shuttle program in 2011, which allows NASA to maintain the space station fully equipped with its own astronauts and astronauts. from partner space agencies. such as the European Space Agency (ESA). Before Crew Dragon became operational in 2020, NASA relied on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft to transport the ISS crew.