The SpaceX Crew Dragon ship of the Crew-12 mission, called Freedom, undocked the ISS on October 7 at 15:05 Moscow time and began its return journey to Earth – the journey took more than 27 hours. The flight went smoothly: the day before, on October 8 at 18:34 Moscow time, the capsule landed in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Los Angeles, as planned.
Image source: NASA
Shortly after landing, the four crew members were safely removed from the ship and aboard the rescue vessel. They will undergo a medical examination and 45 days of post-flight adaptation, which will help the body get used to gravity conditions again. The crew included NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Sophie Adenot and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrei Fedyaev. For Meir and Fedyaev, this was the second space flight; for Hathaway and Adeno, the Crew-12 mission was the first.
The Crew-12 crew departed for the ISS on February 13 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle. With their arrival, the crew size at the station increased to seven people. Previously, since January 15, the ISS had been operating with a reduced crew of three because the SpaceX Crew-11 crew returned to Earth a month earlier than planned due to health problems with NASA astronaut Mike Fincke. This was the first medical evacuation in the long history of the ISS – then the situation was not critical, NASA emphasized, and now he feels well.
The crew of Crew-12 was replaced by the crew of Crew-13 – it arrived at the ISS last Thursday, October 1. The crew of Crew-13 reached the station in less than eight hours after launch – it was the fastest flight of an American spacecraft to the ISS. The world record belongs to the Russian Soyuz MS-17, which on October 14, 2020 delivered the crew to the ISS in 3 hours and 3 minutes. Crew 13 was originally scheduled to launch on September 12, but due to an oxidizer leak in the Crew Dragon’s propulsion system, the launch had to be postponed. As a result, the crew of Crew-12 spent several weeks longer in orbit than planned.
The crew of Crew-12 performed maintenance work on the ISS and conducted scientific experiments. Jessica Meir has performed spacewalks four times, seven times in her entire career. Sophie Adeneau became the first French woman in outer space on August 18, and she has also spent more time in space than any other ESA astronaut – 237 days.
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