Four civil astronauts ended the mission on SpaceX vehicles on Friday, splattering in waters near Oceanside, California.
It was the first time the company had brought people back to Earth in the Pacific after six years of Dragon Capsules splashed out of Florida in the Atlantic or Gulf of Mexico.
The FRAM2 mission was circling the Earth for four days in a north-south orbit. This journey was the first time people could look directly down the North and Antarctica from orbit.
SpaceX moved its operation to the Pacific Ocean, eliminating the issue of dragon fragments falling into random parts of the Earth. The Pacific Ocean is the largest pool of water on Earth, and the weather along the US West Coast tends to be fairly good, providing a favourable day for astronauts to return.
The first SpaceX Astronaut Mission, a test flight in May 2020, saw Douglas Hurley and NASA's Robert Behnken launch on the International Space Station. Just two months later, they returned to Earth and splashed into the Gulf waters off Pensacola, Florida. This was the first flight to use SpaceX's upgraded Dragon 2 capsule design.
It was followed by nine NASA-funded flights, five private flights, and ten cargo missions (9 NASA-funded flights) to acquire equipment and equipment to the International Space Station. Everything splashed out of Florida safely.
However, fragments of the spacecraft's trunk – a cylindrical segment under the capsule that will be abandoned before re-entry – were descending in an unexpected place. Australian sheep field. Farms in Saskatchewan, Canada. North Carolina hiking trails.
No one was hurt or property damage was caused. However, hoping to continue your fortune is not considered proper protection from the continuous rains of space debris.
SpaceX said they expected the spacecraft's trunk to burn out completely during the re-entry. It turned out to be untrue, so last year SpaceX announced a change that will be doing Dragon Landing.
First, the trunk is abandoned later on the return journey after the spacecraft fires a thruster to fall out of orbit. It allows you to target debris, and the Pacific Ocean provides a massive, unmaintained spread of water, where debris poses no danger to people.
Before these changes, the Dragon Trunk remained on track for weeks to months without a way to predict where he would re-enter the country.
For NASA, the milder Pacific climate also helps to schedule missions.
In October, the Dragon Capsule, which contains four astronauts, was two weeks late from the space station. First, Hurricane Milton, which swept Florida, followed by stormy conditions and choppy seas.
SpaceX has moved partially through Florida's Dragon Landing to meet NASA requirements for faster processing of scientific experiments returning from space. It also takes SpaceX to take some time to bring the capsule back to Florida to prepare for your next flight.
The final East Coast landing occurred last month, with the NASA mission returning from the space station that revived two NASA astronauts, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore. Their stay in orbit extended over nine months due to the problems with the Boeing Starliner spacecraft, as they were in orbit. The flight ended in a whimsical moment as the dolphin pod investigated the spacecraft and the boats it traveled to recover.
This week's FRAM2 mission, Chun Wang, an investor who made the fortune through blockchain and cryptocurrency mining, paid a private amount. He chose three to accompany him. Norwegian filmmaker Jannicke Mikkelsen. Laveer Lodge is a German robot researcher. Eric Phillips is an Australian explorer who specializes in expeditions to the polar regions.
Wang appointed a mission after Fulham, a Norwegian ship that explored the Arctic in the 19th century.
He provided a series of updates from orbit 270 miles above the surface of the Earth, including a creepy beginning.
“Space movement sickness hit us all – we felt nauseous and ended up vomiting several times,” he wrote in X.
He said by the second morning he was moving and sick.
Splashdowns for Pacific astronauts were common in the early days of spaceflight, with most of NASA's Apollo missions landing there.
The landing in the Pacific is also SpaceX's return to the past. From 2012 to 2020, all 20 missions using previous versions of the company's Dragon Capsule were all scattered there to transport cargo to the space station.
I won't say anything about whether the dolphins on the West Coast are equally curious.
