The Crew-5 mission from SpaceX has successfully landed on the planet. After a five-month stay at the International Space Station, the company's "Endurance" Dragon spacecraft touched down on Sunday afternoon off the coast of Florida. Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann of NASA, Koichi Wakata of Japan, and Anna Kikina of Russia were also aboard the spacecraft.
The four were in space for 157 days during an ISS rotation that will go down in history. According to Space.com, Mann, a Wailaki native, became the first Native American woman to fly in space on the Crew-5 mission. It was also the first time a Russian cosmonaut has flown on a commercial American spacecraft, a historic feat made possible by the seat-sharing deal NASA and Roscosmos negotiated last year amid rising tensions between the US and Russia over the conflict in Ukraine.
The voyage marked Wakata's fifth return to Earth from space, a Japanese record. In addition, Endurance made its second orbital journey on this mission after safely returning Crew-3 to Earth in the autumn. Before to its subsequent mission, the spacecraft will now return to SpaceX's Dragon Lair facility in Florida for safety inspections and refurbishing.
NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, who travelled to the ISS on MS-22, the Russian Soyuz spacecraft that suffered a coolant leak late last year after what seemed to be a micrometeoroid hit, was not present on the voyage. Since Roscomos concluded MS-22 could only safely carry two people, the Endurance crew temporarily adapted their vehicle to take Rubio in case of an emergency escape from the ISS. However, once Russia deployed a different Soyuz spacecraft to return Rubio and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin to Earth, they undid those adjustments.
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