ASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 spacecraft has returned to Earth after a five-month stay aboard the International Space Station, a video broadcast live by the US space agency showed, AFP reported. On board SpaceX’s Endurance capsule were Koichi Wakata of Japan, Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina and NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Kasada.
It crashed into the Gulf of Mexico shortly after 21:00 (02:00 GMT) off the west coast of Florida. Crew-5, which launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida in early October 2022, was the fifth space mission for Wakata and the first for Cassada, Kikina and Mann — who also became the first Indian woman in space, NASA said.
Before leaving the ISS, members of Crew-5 were greeted by the successors to the Crew-6 mission, which launched on March 1 from Cape Canaveral.
Less than a week earlier, a Soyuz rocket had been launched from Kazakhstan to serve as a replacement for MS-22, another Russian craft that broke down while attached to the ISS. The three members of MS-22 – one American and two Russians – were originally scheduled to return at the end of March after about six months in space, but will now stay for almost a year. ICC cooperation has become one of the few remaining areas in which the United States and Russia continue to work together since Moscow invaded Ukraine more than a year ago.
