SpaceX Brings Home 4-Crew Members

Return Is Pushed Back For 4-Crew Members

This week is expected to return with four astronauts from the International Space Station. It will end their almost six-month mission in space. However, bad weather had delayed the return at the crew’s splashdown location. The group of astronauts, include Italian Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency and NASA’s Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines, and Jessica Watkins, which were supposed to leave the space station on Thursday morning in a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. However, due to the bad weather back on Earth, NASA was obliged to push the launch to this Friday.

Fortunately, they have landed! NASA’s fourth commercial crew mission to the International Space Station was successfully completed on Friday when the Crew-4 astronauts from SpaceX safely splashed down off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida. The four-member international crew was in orbit for 170 days.

Future explorers will benefit from their work on board the orbiting laboratory, according to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Working and residing on the space station is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but it also necessitates sacrifices from these explorers, particularly time spent away from loved ones. Thank you for your contributions to science, invention, and discovery during the past six months, Kjell, Bob, Jessica, and Samantha!”

What did the SpaceX crew do?

During their mission, Hines, Lindgren, Watkins, and Cristoforetti covered 72,168,935 miles, stayed on the space station for 170 days, and made 2,720 orbits of the planet. With the conclusion of their trip today, Cristoforetti will have spent 369 days in space over the course of her two flights, moving her up to second place on the all-time chart for the most days spent in space by a woman. Lindgren had spent 311 days in orbit during his two flights. Hines and Watkins flew into space for the first time on the Crew-4 mission.

The Crew-4 astronauts participated in numerous science, maintenance, and technological demonstration projects throughout their mission. Cristoforetti and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev undertook two spacewalks to maintain and enhance the station.

Crew-4 continued its work on investigations into how dietary changes affect gut microbiome and immune system health. How fuel temperature affects flammability of a material. How equipment noise and microgravity may affect astronaut hearing. At last, whether additives increase or decrease emulsion stability. The astronauts also tested a revolutionary water-reclamation membrane. They looked at a concrete substitute derived from a substance found in lunar and Martian dust. As well as studying the immune system alterations brought on by microgravity that are comparable to aging.

What does SpaceX have for the future?

SpaceX plans to expand their Starlink Satellites; In-house-built satellites that will form the backbone of a worldwide broadband network. SpaceX started testing in 2020 have been launched by the corporation in numbers totaling about 2,000 since 2019. The service is accessible in portions of North America, Europe, and Australia, and as more satellites are launched, coverage is anticipated to increase.

In support of the Starlink project. Which has been marketed as a low-latency-high-speed network accessible to internet users in rural areas in particular. The business eventually expects to launch over 10,000 satellites. Nearly 150,000 people presently use the service, but it has been difficult for the company to keep up with demand for its network in part because of supply issues that delayed the construction of the terminals consumers need to receive a signal from the companies satellites.

Second Project;

Another project they have is carbon capturing; According to Musk’s December tweet, SpaceX was “beginning a program to extract (carbon dioxide) out of (the) atmosphere and transform it into rocket fuel.” Although the statement is far from a detailed plan, it was made less than a year after the XPrize Foundation competition was announced, which would have given students, researchers, and entrepreneurs the chance to compete for $100 million donated by Elon Musk’s charitable foundation in the hopes of developing carbon removal technologies that might help to lessen the effects of global warming.

It’s unclear when exactly such a system would be developed, but Musk highlighted on Twitter that the technology “will also be vital” for the business’s upcoming expeditions to Mars.

For now, its assumed that SpaceX and Nasa will keep collaborating.

Written by Adriana

Sources:

CNN: Weather Forces Delay for Nasa astronauts returning from space station on Space X capsule

Nasa: Nasa’s Space X Crew-4 Astronauts Safely Splash Down in Atlantic

Los Angeles Business Journal: SpaceX Has Big Projects in the Works for 2022

Top and Featured Image Courtesy of Billy Brown Flickr Page – Creative Commons License

Inset Image Courtesy Of  NOAA Photo Library Flickr Page- Creative Commons License