04 September 2023 , 10:16
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Footage shows the moment NASA's SpaceX crew splashed down after six months at the International Space Station.
NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren were onboard the ship that touched down safely in the Atlantic Ocean, near the coast of Florida, along with Russian Andrei Fedyaev and Sultan al-Neyadi. al-Neyadi is the first Arab person to spend time in orbit for an extended period.
The capsule carrying the crew was seen shooting across the sky in spectacular scenes in the middle of the night over Cape Canaveral. "You've got a roomful of happy people here," SpaceX Mission Control said to the crew when they returned from orbit.
SpaceX is a private company working with NASA on the missions. It was founded by tech billionaire Elon Musk.
Before departing the space station, they said they were craving hot showers, steaming cups of coffee and the ocean air since arriving in March. Their homecoming was delayed a day because of poor weather at the splashdown locations.
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The capsule was seen streaking across the sky (AP)The crew's replacement was launched over a week ago and another crew switch will occur later this month. Two Russians and another American are expected to come back to Earth after a whole year.
They were forced to double their mission after their Soyuz capsule leaked all of its coolant. This mean a new craft had to be launched.
The launch of the new crew was the first where every spacecraft seat was occupied by a different country. US Marine pilot, NASA's Jasmin Moghbeli, was joined by the European Space Agency’s Andreas Mogensen, Japan’s Satoshi Furukawa and Russia’s Konstantin Borisov.
“To explore space, we need to do it together,” the European Space Agency's director general, Josef Aschbacher, said minutes before liftoff. “Space is really global, and international cooperation is key.”
The SpaceX crew made a spectacular return home (AP)Moghbeli’s parents fled Iran during the 1979 revolution. Born in Germany and raised on New York’s Long Island, she joined the Marines and flew attack helicopters in Afghanistan. The first-time space traveler hopes to show Iranian girls that they, too, can aim high. “Belief in yourself is something really powerful,” she said before the flight.
Mogensen worked on oil rigs off the West African coast after getting an engineering degree. He told people puzzled by his job choice that “in the future we would need drillers in space” like Bruce Willis' character in the killer asteroid film “Armageddon." He’s convinced the rig experience led to his selection as Denmark’s first astronaut