ISS: Commercial astronaut team back on Earth
April 25, 2022
The first all-private astronauts to board the International Space Station (ISS) left the satellite on Monday.
After two weeks on board the ISS, the four astronauts began their journey back to earth at around 0100 UTC on Monday, capping a mission NASA has touted as a landmark in commercial spaceflight.
SpaceX confirmed the Crew Dragon capsule had splashed down off the coast of the US state of Florida in the Atlantic Ocean.
Parachuting into the Atlantic Ocean
The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, along with the astronauts from Houston-based startup firm Axiom Space Inc., used parachutes in the final stage of descent before landing in the Atlantic Ocean shortly after 1700 UTC.
The trip back had previously been postponed for several days "due to unfavorable weather forecasts," NASA tweeted last week.
The crew members were led by Spanish-American astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, 63, with US entrepreneur Larry Connor, 72, as second in command. Joining them were Israeli entrepreneur Eytan Stibbe, 64, and Canadian investor Mark Pathy, aged 52.
Scientific ambitions
The ISS has hosted several wealthy space tourists over the years, but the Axiom crew was the first all-commercial team ever welcomed to the space station as working astronauts. As part of the quartet's mission, 25 science and biomedical experiments were to be conducted in orbit.
These experiments included research on brain health, cardiac stem cells, cancer and aging.
kb,jsi/aw (Reuters, dpa)