CNN: Crew Dragon ship with Anna Kikina landed off FloridaThe Crew Dragon spacecraft from SpaceX with crew Crew-5 landed in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida.
Astronauts Anna Kikina, Nicole Mann, Josh Cassada and Koichi Wakata returned to Earth, CNN reports.
Jackie WattlesOn Saturday, March 11, four astronauts who were part of the crew of the Crew-5 mission returned to Earth after five months on the International Space Station.
Their spacecraft successfully landed off the coast of Florida.
SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft undocked from the ISS at 2:20 a.m. eastern time, marking the final stage of the astronauts' space journey. Then the ship approached the Earth, entered its atmosphere and landed off the coast of Tampa, Florida, at about 9 pm eastern time.
In the area of the flooding, search vessels were waiting for the crew, ready to pull the capsule out of the ocean and help the crew members disembark, where they were able to breathe fresh air for the first time in almost 160 days.
Four crew members – NASA astronauts Nicole Mann (Nicole Mann) and Josh Cassada (Josh Cassada), astronaut of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency Koichi Wakata (Koichi Wakata) and cosmonaut of the Russian agency "Roscosmos" Anna Kikina – went to the ISS aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule in October last year. For several months, they conducted various studies and were engaged in servicing the orbital laboratory, which is already two decades old.
For several days before returning to Earth, the crew of the Crew-5 mission handed over matters to the Crew-6 mission team, which arrived at the station on March 3.
Crew-5 TeamMann, a member of the Wailaki Indian tribe from the Round Valley Reservation, became the first Native American woman to fly into space.
Like other astronauts, she devoted part of her time in orbit to public outreach, which was aimed, among other things, at motivating children from Native American communities. During the broadcast, which took place in November 2022, Mann showed the audience the "dream catcher" – a traditional Indian amulet that helps ward off bad dreams – which she took with her to the ISS.
"I am very proud to represent Native Americans and my heritage," Mann said in an interview with reporters before the flight into space. "I think it is very important to focus on our diversity and understand how significant it is when we cooperate and unite, because in this case we can achieve incredible success."
The participation of the Russian Kikina in this mission became part of the Roscosmos and NASA cross-flight program, an agreement on which the parties signed in July 2022. Despite the geopolitical tensions in relations between Russia and the United States, NASA representatives have repeatedly stated that the agency's partnership with Roscosmos is a guarantee for the continuation of the work of the international space station and valuable scientific research carried out on board.
This flight to the ISS was the first flight into space for Mann, Kassada and Kikina.
Wakata has previously flown on NASA space shuttles and on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. This trip was the fifth space flight of a Japanese astronaut.
