SpaceX ’s Crew Dragon Is Safely Back On Earth. Now it’s the Astronauts’ Turn

There was nobody aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon to feel the jolt when the spacecraft splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean at 8:45 a.m. ET Friday morning off the Florida coast after six days in orbit. There aren’t all that many people left in the world who can even describe firsthand what a splashdown feels like, since the last time one occurred was at the end of the final Apollo mission, in the summer of 1975. The next best thing to a person was aboard the Crew Dragon however: a full-sized dummy in a SpaceX spacesuit — named Ripley, after Sigourney Weaver’s character in the Alien series — outfitted with sensors to record and report all of the physical experiences of the flight, including the hard slap as the bottom of the spacecraft hit the water. As early as July, Ripley the dummy astronaut could be followed by the real deal, as two Americans are scheduled to take off aboard the first crewed Crew Dragon, ending a drought of astronaut launchings from American soil that began in the summer of 2011 when the last space shuttle flew and the program was mothballed. (Of course, that mission could always be delayed, as spaceflights that monumental so often are.) Successful splashdown of the #CrewDragon right on time at 8:45 a.m. ET. pic.twitter.com/0qHhHzD4Js — NASA Commercial Crew (@Commercial_Crew) March 8, 2019 Crew Dragon’s near-perfect flight — an on-time launch, a flawless docking, and six days of operating in the punishing environ...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized onetime space SpaceX Source Type: news