Crew-2 Astronauts Splashdown Off Florida’s Gulf Coast
By Bob Granath
After more than six months aboard the International Space Station, the Crew 2 astronauts splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola, Florida at 10:33 p.m. EST on Nov. 8, 2021. Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur of NASA were aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft with Aki Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and the European Space Agency’s Thomas Pesquet of France.
The Crew Dragon spacecraft undocked earlier in the day at 2:05 p.m. EST. The astronauts then performed a “fly around” taking photographs of the orbiting laboratory. At splashdown, the crew completed 199 days in space returning to Earth with about 530 pounds of hardware and scientific investigations.
“We’re happy to have Shane, Megan, Aki, and Thomas safely back on Earth after another successful, record-setting long-duration mission to the International Space Station,” said NASA administrator Bill Nelson. “Congratulations to the teams at NASA and SpaceX who worked so hard to ensure their successful splashdown. NASA’s Commercial Crew Program continues to demonstrate safe, reliable transportation to conduct important science and maintenance on the space station.”
The four astronauts lifted off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on April 23, 2021, from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center. The Crew-2 mission was the second crew rotation flight of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket with astronauts to the space station as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program.
Click here to read more about the Crew-2 mission.
During the Crew-2 mission, the astronauts participated in numerous scientific investigations and technology demonstrations including four spacewalks. The experiments included how gaseous flames behave in microgravity and they grew green chiles in the station’s Plant Habitat Facility. Future long-duration missions will require growing food for missions lasting in excess of a year while traveling to destinations such as Mars.
Along with others aboard the space station, the astronauts took hundreds of pictures of Earth as part of the Crew Earth Observation investigation contributing to tracking of natural disasters and changes on Earth.
After splashdown, crews aboard the SpaceX recovery ship, Go Navigator, secured the spacecraft, lifted it aboard and helped the astronauts out within an hour of landing. The four crewmembers will take a short helicopter trip to shore. This will be followed by a flight aboard a NASA jet to Ellington Field near the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
With the return of Crew 2, NASA’s Crew 3 mission to the International Space Station is cleared for liftoff with Raja Chari and Thomas Mashburn and Kayla Barron of NASA, along with European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer of Germany. Their SpaceX Crew Dragon is scheduled to launch atop the company’s Falcon 9 rocket at 9:03 p.m. EST, Nov. 10, 2021.
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