Cape Canaveral. Four astronauts landed on Earth on Monday from a SpaceX capsule after spending 200 days at the space station. His capsule landed in the Gulf of Mexico off the Pensacola coast of Florida in the dark of night. SpaceX’s Expedition Control Room from Southern California said over the radio, “Welcome back home from SpaceX.” Within an hour, the four astronauts were ejected from the capsule.
They arrived on Earth just eight hours after leaving the International Space Center, paving the way for four other astronauts to leave for the space station from SpaceX by Wednesday night in their place. These four astronauts were to take off earlier but were delayed due to bad weather and an unknown medical condition of one of the astronauts.
NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan MacArthur, Japan’s Akihito Hoshide and France’s Thomas Pesquet were to return Monday morning but their return was delayed due to strong winds. From the space station, NASA astronaut Mark Wende Hei bid farewell to fellow astronauts and told MacArthur, “I will miss the sound of your applause from the next module.”
The way for these four astronauts to return to Earth was not easy. The toilet in his capsule was broken and he had to wear a diaper during the eight-hour journey back home. Earlier in April, shortly after its departure, Mission Control had warned about a piece of debris hitting their capsule in space, but it later turned out to be a false warning. The next team going to the space station will stay there for six months. A Japanese industrialist and his personal assistant will leave from Russia’s space agency in December. After this, three businessmen will go to space from SpaceX in February.
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