SpaceX's Crew-6 Safely Returns to Earth After 6-Month Mission on ISS

After completing their first long-duration spaceflight, the four astronauts who comprised SpaceX's Crew 6 just returned to Earth from the International Space Station (ISS). The group stayed on ISS for half a year.

SpaceX's Crew-6 Is Back

On Sunday, the Crew Dragon "Endeavour" left the space station autonomously undocked from the Harmony node's space-facing port at 7:05 a.m. (11:05 GMT) EDT. They landed off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, in the Atlantic Ocean.

SpaceX's Crew-6, which also included NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren "Woody" Hoburg, Sultan AlNeyadi of the United Arab Emirates, and Andrey Fedyaev of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, splashed down on the Dragon spacecraft "Endeavour" at 12:17 a.m. Monday (Sept. 4), around 03:30 EDT (04:17 GMT). Only Bowen had flown in space before the said mission.

In a brief ceremony marking their departure from the station on Thursday (Aug. 31), Bowen remarked that when they first arrived on ISS six months ago, it was a novel experience for all of them. He had gone to space but had never been on a mission that lasted a very long time. The recent mission had reportedly been a terrific experience, and he loved watching his incredible crewmates grow.

The Crew-6 astronauts, who launched on March 2, completed their 186-day mission after working as flight engineers for Expeditions 68 and 69 of the International Space Station. They were supposed to return home on Sunday morning (Sept. 3), but bad weather caused them to linger in orbit for an extra day.

Warren added at the same ceremony that spending six months living and working aboard the spectacular orbiting outpost had been a true privilege and experience of a lifetime. He believed they accomplished a lot.

They started with SpaceX [Commercial Resupply Services or CRS] 27, a cargo spacecraft loaded with scientific goods, their first launch. Later, they invited a visiting Axiom crew aboard and had the SpaceX [CRS] 28 mission.

Three spacewalks were completed by Crew 6 as a group. A Cygnus [cargo] vehicle was berthed. Warren was hopeful to leave ISS in a better condition than they found it, as they did a lot of maintenance there.

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More About SpaceX's Crew-6

Onboard Endeavour was a crew of four NASA astronauts - Woody Hoburg and Stephen Bowen, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Sultan Al Neyadi, and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. They stayed in the orbiting lab for their six-month mission.

All of them were rookies except for Bowen, the Crew-6 commander. Al Neyadi is the first individual from UAE to spend a long-duration stint aboard ISS.

The Crew-5 mission and Crew-6 mission are concurrent. NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann, Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, and cosmonaut Anna Kikina comprised the Crew-5 group. Five days after Crew-6 arrives, the Crew-5 mission is scheduled to return to Earth.

Along with the members of Crew-5, Frank Rubio of NASA and the cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin are also in orbit around the ISS. Since September, they have traveled in the Russian Soyuz spacecraft on the orbiting lab.