The joint venture of NASA and SpaceX’s Crew-3 landed home today morning Friday after an experimenting 177 days tour of duty at the International Space Station. The Crew-3 improbable mission with three astronauts from NASA alongside one from European Space Agency splashed down off the seaboard of Tampa, Florida, at 10:13 am IST (12:43 am ET), rounding off its mission. The SpaceX Crew-3 astronauts triumphantly undocked from the International space station at 10:50 am IST Thursday.
“Thanks for letting us take Endurance… looking forward to watching more flights with Endurance in the future. It was a great ride and enjoyed working with the SpaceX and NASA team for getting us up to the space station and back so quickly,” Chari, one of the astronauts, said after the splashdown.
The SpaceX Crew-3 astronauts spent 177 days (6 months) at the International Space Station and conducted numerous science experiments. The astronauts have also marked their footprint by conducting spacewalks (Extra-Vehicular Activity), exiting the spacecraft precisely walking in space.
The main purpose of performing spacewalk is to mend exterior repairs on things like a solar panel or Spacedocks. The Crew-3 compromised of NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, Kayla Barron, and European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer. They departed from Earth to the Space Station in a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket back in November 2021 and spent nearly six months before descending under Parachutes into the coast of Tampa.
The European Space Agency and the German Space Agency prepared a large part of the science complement that I was able to execute up here, – said Maurer before leaving the space station. “It’s the end of the six months mission, but I think the space dream lives on.”
“One hundred years from now, we’ll be looking back on the International Space Station as certainly an incredible engineering accomplishment, certainly as a way that countries all around the world have been able to raise their technological base and have been able to produce scientific results to save lives and to improve human life,” said Marshburn.