Crew Of First Operational SpaceX Mission Returns Safely In Rare Night Landing

San Diego CA

02 May, 2021

4:43 PM

Description

By Chris Jennewein, Times of San Diego May 2, 2021 The four astronauts of the first operational Crew Dragon mission returned safely to earth late Saturday in a rare night landing in the Gulf of Mexico. The capsule carrying NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, and Shannon Walker, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi, returned to Earth in a parachute-assisted splashdown at 11:56 p.m. Pacific Time off the coast of Panama City, Florida. Crews aboard SpaceX recovery vessels successfully recovered the spacecraft and astronauts. After returning to shore, the astronauts will fly back to Houston. NASA's SpaceX Crew-1 mission launched Nov. 15, 2020, on a Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It was the first operational mission under NASA's Commercial Crew Program. The four astronauts spent 168 days in orbit, all but one aboard the International Space Station. It was the first night splashdown of a U.S. crewed spacecraft since Apollo 8's predawn return from orbiting the moon in 1968. The splashdown comes just over one week after the launch of NASA's SpaceX Crew-2 mission, the second long-duration mission. The Crew-2 astronauts launched April 23 and will live and work aboard the station until their return to Earth in about six months. Times of San Diego is an independent online news site covering the San Diego metropolitan area. Our journalists report on politics, crime, business, sports, education, arts, the military and everyday life in San Diego. No subscription is required, and you can sign up for a free daily newsletter with a summary of the latest news.