Three American and one German astronauts returned to Earth on April 6, 2022 aboard the SpaceX Dragon capsule after traveling for more than 23 hours.
NASA astronauts Kayla Barron, Raja Chari and Thomas Marshburn, and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Matthias Maurer spent nearly six months on the International Space Station (ISS). Their Endurance capsule exploded in the middle of the night in the Gulf of Mexico near Tampa, Florida.
Their mission was marked by intense geopolitical tensions between Russia and other ISS partners over the invasion of Ukraine. On April 4, 2022, Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said that Russia would suspend ISS cooperation and that the space partnership would be possible only after the sanctions imposed by the United States, Canada, the European Union and Japan were lifted.
Yet on May 4, 2022, when Marshburn handed over command of the ISS to Oleg Artemiev, they both expressed a message of hope and peace. “The long-term legacy of the space station is likely to be international cooperation and a place of peace,” Marshburn said. “What matters most […] is our family, our children, the peace between our countries and our friendship. Thank you for the friendship, “Artemiev replied.
Another Dragon capsule, called Freedom, took four more ISS astronauts, launching a previous crew from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 27, 2022.
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