After almost six months in space, three American astronauts and a German returned to Earth this Friday (6) aboard a SpaceX capsule, which landed off the coast of Florida.
The Dragon capsule, which was carrying Americans Kayla Barron, Raja Chari and Tom Marshburn, as well as European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Matthias Maurer, separated from the International Space Station (ISS) and after 23 hours of travel landed at 01:43 a.m. (Brasilia time).
“On behalf of the entire SpaceX team, welcome home,” said an employee of the American company.
The crew, called Crew-3, spent their last days aboard the ISS carrying out the transfer with Crew-4, also made up of four astronauts (three Americans and one Italian).
The latter took off from Florida a week ago, with SpaceX.
There are still three Russians left on the ISS, who arrived with a Russian Soyuz rocket.
It was the sixth landing of a SpaceX manned Dragon capsule, which regularly transports astronauts to the ISS at the request of NASA.
Matthias Maurer is the 12th German astronaut in space. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz wished him on Twitter “a safe journey back” and highlighted “all the new discoveries made in space”.
Crew-3 members performed several scientific experiments. They studied, for example, how to harden cement in weightless conditions, which could be important for future constructions, such as on the Moon.
And they made the second harvest of peppers aboard the station.
During their stay, they were also visited by a private mission, made up of three businessmen who paid tens of millions of dollars each to spend two weeks aboard the ISS. Visitors traveled with SpaceX.
