Authentic SpaceX Group-8 portrait with (L-R) Roscosmos cosmonaut and Undertaking Specialist Aleksandr Grebenkin, and Pilot Michael Barratt, Commander Matthew Dominick, and Undertaking Specialist Jeanette Epps, all 3 NASA astronauts.
Invoice Stafford/NASA
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Invoice Stafford/NASA
NASA’s Group-8 venture participants returned to Earth Friday — capping a just about eight-month venture after their travel from the Global Area Station used to be prolonged a number of instances.
The SpaceX Dragon tablet sporting the four-member group splashed down off the coast of Pensacola, Fla., simply sooner than 3:30 a.m. ET after a fiery midnight go back throughout southern Mexico. Over about an hour, the tablet pierced the ambience with an orbital speed of 17,500 mph and ultimately eased to a leisurely 16 mph underneath a cover of parachutes because it landed within the Gulf of Mexico. The tablet undocked from the distance station Wednesday afternoon. The Group-8 participants spent 235 days in house, the longest of any human SpaceX venture. Their spacecraft — Endeavour — set a length document for a human-rated tablet: 701 days in orbit.
The group integrated 3 NASA astronauts: commander Matthew Dominick, pilot Michael Barratt, and venture specialist Jeanette Epps. Cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin of Roscosmos, Russia’s house company, used to be additionally a part of this venture. A number of hours after the splashdown, NASA introduced that every one 4 participants of the group have been taken to a clinic in Pensacola “for added analysis.” In a chain of statements, NASA stated the group exited the spacecraft onto a restoration send for usual post-flight clinical examinations and “further analysis of the group participants used to be asked out of an abundance of warning.”
This photograph supplied by means of NASA displays strengthen groups operating across the SpaceX Dragon Endeavour spacecraft in a while after it landed, within the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola, Fla. on Friday.
NASA/by means of AP’s Joel Kowsky
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NASA/by means of AP’s Joel Kowsky
The distance company says a NASA astronaut skilled a “clinical factor” after the go back. “After clinical analysis on the clinic, 3 of the group participants departed Pensacola and feature arrived at NASA’s Johnson Area Middle in Houston,” the commentary stated. NASA says the only astronaut who stays at Ascension is “in strong situation underneath commentary as a precautionary measure.” NASA has now not launched the title of the group member to offer protection to that particular person’s clinical privateness and identification. They lifted off into house on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on March 3, 2024, and spent greater than seven months on the house station engaging in clinical analysis, together with at the shift of frame fluids all through spaceflight and the way UV radiation and weightlessness impact plant enlargement.
All over their time at the house station, Group-8 participants additionally become a part of a document collection of folks orbiting Earth. When the Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft introduced a NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts to the station in September, there have been a complete of nineteen folks in orbit, together with the astronauts on China’s Tiangong house station. The Group-8 venture used to be meant to finish in August however used to be prolonged a number of instances following issues all through the check flight of Boeing’s Starliner tablet. Starliner, which carried two NASA astronauts, skilled thruster issues because it approached the distance station in June. NASA decided it used to be too dangerous for the group to go back to Earth on board Starliner and flew the spacecraft again to Earth empty in September.
The 2 Group-9 venture participants, who arrived on the station in September, will convey again the NASA astronauts left by means of Starliner, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, on the final touch in their venture, which is about to finish in February 2025. The go back of Group-8 used to be additionally not on time because of Typhoon Milton and unfavourable climate prerequisites on the splashdown websites off Florida over the last week. NPR’s Russell Lewis and Central Florida Public Media’s Brendan Byrne contributed to this document.
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