The two american astronauts participated in the first private flight lived and had left for the ISS on may 30. They have amerri Sunday night in the gulf of Mexico.
Two american astronauts from the international space Station have amerri Sunday night in the gulf of Mexico aboard a capsule SpaceX, crowning success of this first demonstration mission to the space company for Nasa. In less than an hour aboard the Dragon SpaceX, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley are passed to a speed of 28.000 km/h in orbit at a speed of 24 km/h at the time of the landing, four large chutes open as planned after the burning atmospheric re-entry. They have amerri off Pensacola in the gulf of Mexico, a site chosen to avoid a tropical storm in the area.
“Welcome to Earth, and thank you for having flown on SpaceX” announced the flight director to the astronauts, who are going well and have responded. “It was an honor and a privilege,” said Doug Hurley. The successful round-trip to the international space Station (ISS) puts an end to the Russian monopoly for access to the ISS since the Americans have made the garage their space shuttles in July 2011. Nasa will use the capsule Dragon of the order of two times per year to send four astronauts at a time, including non-Americans, a Japanese and European Thomas Pesquet being planned for future missions.
The mission may seem a small step in the exploration of space: “Bob” and “Doug” are gone or on the Moon or to Mars, only in the old space station, 400 km from the Earth, where the Russians and Americans, and others that come and go since 1998. Nasa, though, sees it as a “revolution”, because SpaceX is going to give the United States access to space, the less expensive than its previous programmes. For three billion awarded since 2011 in the framework of a fixed-price contract, SpaceX has fully developed a new taxi space, and promised to provide six round-trips to the ISS. Previously, the space agency ordered a vehicle specific to the giants of the industry, and assumed all of the budget overruns.
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by doing so, the former start-up has beaten Boeing, in which the capsule Starliner, developed for the same purpose, has missed a flight test vacuum last year and will not be ready until 2021 at the earliest.
Recovered
On 30 may, the company of Elon Musk, also the patron saint of electric vehicles, Tesla, had a successful first feat by channelling Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the laboratory orbital, doing to humans what she was doing regularly for the cargo ship since 2012. Donald Trump had attended in person at the take-off from Florida, and he had to applaud the boss of SpaceX. “The launch today shows that the future belongs to the space industry private,” said the american president.
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After two months in the ISS, and several spacewalks, the two men had made their goodbyes Saturday to three other crew members Russian and american, and left the station without a hitch around 23h34 GMT (1h34 in France). They spent the night on board, without incident, and then donned their space suits for the atmospheric re-entry and the end of the trip phase the more dangerous of the mission.
The us space agency had decided to keep their return in spite of the tropical storm Isaias, which carries high winds and heavy rains on the east coast of Florida. She only abandoned the first proposed site, located on the Atlantic coast most exposed. A ship of SpaceX, GB Navigator, is on the area and must retrieve crew, who will undergo immediate medical examinations before being brought back to the mainland.
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The capsule Dragon Crew will be transported to a site of SpaceX in Florida for an inspection of six weeks to check that it will once again serve as the space taxi, in this case for the mission of the spring of 2021, with Thomas Pesquet on board.
