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A SpaceX capsule with NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken crashed Sunday in the Gulf of Mexico after more than two months on the International Space Station, completing the personal spacecraft’s first mission.
The successful project opens the door to a new era of area flights, in which NASA hires personal corporations such as SpaceX, in Hawthorne, to take their astronauts to the area station.
NASA said such an arrangement lowers prices while allowing the company to draw attention to more complex efforts, such as returning missions to the Moon or moving to Mars. And even those missions will be completed through advertising associations, said Jim Bridenstine, NASA’s administrator.
“The Commercial Crew program just showed the commercial style of how we’re moving forward,” he said of NASA’s partnership with SpaceX and Boeing Co. to send astronauts to the station.
The spacecraft, called Dragon Endeavour, left the area station on Saturday afternoon. Behnken and Hurley went to sleep aboard the capsule before they were woken up on Sunday morning with an audio message from their young children.
The capsule maneuvered closer to Earth and then began burning its orbit just before 2 p.m. Eastern time. Crew Dragon then passed through the atmosphere, reaching temperatures of 3500 degrees Fahrenheit. Fresh air is pumped through the capsule into the astronaut seats to keep them comfortable.
At 1443 Eastern Time, live footage of a NASA high-altitude study aircraft showed a small white dot rushing toward the frame as the spacecraft was heading toward its landing site at approximately 400 mph.
A minute later, anti-drug parachutes were deployed, slowing down the ship to about 150 mph. Then, 4 large parachutes jumped out of the capsule and inflated in the air, slowing down its descent to about 15 mph before the ship splashed at 2:48 p.m. Eastern time near Pensacola, Florida.
Less than 30 minutes later, a rescue ship wrapped the capsule on its deck. The capsule hatch opened around four o’clock in the afternoon. Eastern Time, and Behnken and Hurley were helped out of the capsule soon after. The two greeted a camera aboard the ship or lifted their thumbs while escorting them to a medical examination.
The team reported shortly after the touchdown that they were feeling well.
“Thank you for making the maximum complicated portions and maximum vital portions of manned spaceflight, putting us into orbit and taking us home safely,” Behnken said of the capsule’s communication formula a while before it helped get out of the capsule. “Thank you again. To the right Endeavour ship.
Opening the delayed hatches by detecting poisonous fumes on the outer layer of the capsule. The vapors did not leak into the cockpit, however, the team aboard the recovery ship rinsed the air around the capsule to make sure it was safe.
Smoke controls are not unusual with spacecraft, adding the space shuttle, said Steve Stich, director of NASA’s commercial crew program. In the future, the spacecraft could simply purge the formula earlier, Said SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell. If there had been more wind, the fumes could have dissipated on their own, he said.
It was the first time in forty-five years that astronauts returned to Earth through a landing at sea. The last such landing occurred in July 1975 when an Apollo capsule crashed into the Pacific Ocean in the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.
Since then, aircraft have landed on the ground: the round-trip area has landed on a runway and the Russian Soyuz capsule lands in Kazakhstan.
NASA and SpaceX groups will now comb through the capsule and flight data, and prepare to certify the Crew Dragon spacecraft for normal long-term missions to the area station. The first of these missions may take place in early September.
SpaceX will also begin renewing the NASA Manned Flight Capsule.
In 2014, NASA awarded multimillion-dollar contracts to SpaceX and Boeing Co. to expand the ship and send American astronauts to the station.
According to these contracts, SpaceX and Boeing design and own the spacecraft and NASA is just a customer. NASA said the deal allowed the company to draw its attention on more ambitious missions to the Moon or Mars, while advertising corporations supported more flight operations in low-lying areas of the Earth, such as transporting goods or equipment to the area station.
Boeing’s Starliner capsule performed its first seatless verification flight in December, but the spacecraft was unable to reach the area station due to various disruptions and had to return to Earth several days earlier than planned. Boeing will carry out an unforeseen verification project at the area station before launching the crew.
Behnken and Hurley brought about 330 pounds of cargo to Earth, the maximum of which is clinical and sampling equipment. But there’s also one special detail: an American flag left at the area station through the last Space Shuttle team for the next U.S. launch team to retrieve.