The third long-range team of astronauts launched by SpaceX to NASA’s International Space Station (ISS) safely left orbit early Thursday to begin its descent back to Earth, completing a six-month scientific mission.
The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, carrying three NASA astronauts from the United States and a German astronaut from the European Space Agency, disembarked from the ISS at 1:20 a.m. EDT (5:20 p.m. GMT) to take a return flight expected to lasted about 23 hours.
A live video showing the capsule moving away from the station as the two vehicles soar high above Australia was shown on a NASA webcast.
Dressed in white and black helmet suits, the four astronauts were spotted tied up in the crew cabin shortly before the spacecraft separated from the space station, orbiting about 250 miles (400 km) above Earth.
A series of several short rocket launches then autonomously pushed the capsule safely off the ISS and lowered its orbit to arrange the spacecraft for later atmospheric re-entry and landing.
If all goes well, the Crew Dragon, called Endurance, will parachute into the sea off the coast of Florida at 12:43 EDT on Friday (04:43 GMT).
The Endurance crew, consisting of American astronauts Tom Marshburn, 61, Raja Chari, 44, and Kayla Baron, 34, along with ESA crew colleague Matthias Maurer, 52, arrived at the space station on November 11.
Their departure came about a week after meeting their replacement crew aboard the station, also now home to three Russian astronauts on a long-term mission. One of these astronauts, Oleg Artemiev, took command of the ISS from Marshburn in a handover before disembarking on Thursday, NASA said.
Earlier in April, a separate all-private crew of astronauts launched from SpaceX to the space station under a contract with Houston-based Axiom Space left the orbital lab for two weeks in orbit.
The NASA-ESA team flying home on Thursday was officially named “Crew 3”, the third full-fledged group of long-lasting astronauts, which SpaceX took to the space station for the US space agency.
They will carry about 550 pounds of cargo with them on their flight back to Earth.
SpaceX, a California-based company founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, a billionaire and CEO of electric car maker Tesla Inc. TSLA.O, who recently struck a deal to buy social media platform Twitter TWTR.N, has launched a total seven human space fields over the last two years.
Report by Steve Gorman from Los Angeles; Edited by Simon Cameron-Moore and Stephen Coates
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