SpaceX's Crew-10 Astronauts Return to Earth After Nearly 5 months in Space (space.com) 29
After five months on the International Space Station, four astronauts splashed down in the Pacific Ocean in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule named Endurance, reports Space.com.
It was NASA's 10th commercial crew rotation mission: The flight launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on March 14 and arrived at the orbiting lab two days later. Crew-10's four astronauts soon set to conducting science work, which consumed much of their time over the ensuing months... The wheels for Crew-10's departure began turning last Saturday (Aug. 2), when SpaceX's four-person Crew-11 mission arrived at the International Space Station. The Crew-10 astronauts spent a few days advising their replacements, then set their minds to gearing up for the return to Earth — and reflecting on their orbital experience.
"We got to accomplish a lot of really amazing operational things," Ayers said during a farewell ceremony on Tuesday (Aug. 5). "We got to see some amazing views, and we have had some really big belly laughs and a wonderful time together," she added. "I think that [we're] leaving with a heart full of gratitude, and [we're] excited to see where the International Space Station goes after we get home." The hatches between Endurance and the ISS closed on Friday (Aug. 8) at 4:20 p.m. EDT (2020 GMT), and the capsule undocked about two hours later, at 6:15 p.m. EDT (2205 GMT). Endurance then began maneuvering its way back to Earth, setting up its splashdown today.
It was the first Pacific Ocean return for a SpaceX CCP mission; all previous such flights have come down off the Florida coast. SpaceX recently shifted to West Coast reentries for all of its Dragon missions, both crewed and uncrewed, to minimize the chance that falling space debris could damage property or injure people.
"During their mission, crew members traveled nearly 62,795,205 million miles," NASA announced, "and completed 2,368 orbits around Earth..." Along the way, Crew-10 contributed hundreds of hours to scientific research, maintenance activities, and technology demonstrations. McClain, Ayers, and Onishi completed investigations on plant and microalgae growth, examined how space radiation affects DNA sequences in plants, observed how microgravity changes human eye structure and cells in the body, and more. The research conducted aboard the orbiting laboratory advances scientific knowledge and demonstrates new technologies that enable us to prepare for human exploration of the Moon and Mars.
McClain and Ayers also completed a spacewalk on May 1, relocating a communications antenna, beginning the installation of a mounting bracket for a future International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Array, and other tasks.
It was NASA's 10th commercial crew rotation mission: The flight launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on March 14 and arrived at the orbiting lab two days later. Crew-10's four astronauts soon set to conducting science work, which consumed much of their time over the ensuing months... The wheels for Crew-10's departure began turning last Saturday (Aug. 2), when SpaceX's four-person Crew-11 mission arrived at the International Space Station. The Crew-10 astronauts spent a few days advising their replacements, then set their minds to gearing up for the return to Earth — and reflecting on their orbital experience.
"We got to accomplish a lot of really amazing operational things," Ayers said during a farewell ceremony on Tuesday (Aug. 5). "We got to see some amazing views, and we have had some really big belly laughs and a wonderful time together," she added. "I think that [we're] leaving with a heart full of gratitude, and [we're] excited to see where the International Space Station goes after we get home." The hatches between Endurance and the ISS closed on Friday (Aug. 8) at 4:20 p.m. EDT (2020 GMT), and the capsule undocked about two hours later, at 6:15 p.m. EDT (2205 GMT). Endurance then began maneuvering its way back to Earth, setting up its splashdown today.
It was the first Pacific Ocean return for a SpaceX CCP mission; all previous such flights have come down off the Florida coast. SpaceX recently shifted to West Coast reentries for all of its Dragon missions, both crewed and uncrewed, to minimize the chance that falling space debris could damage property or injure people.
"During their mission, crew members traveled nearly 62,795,205 million miles," NASA announced, "and completed 2,368 orbits around Earth..." Along the way, Crew-10 contributed hundreds of hours to scientific research, maintenance activities, and technology demonstrations. McClain, Ayers, and Onishi completed investigations on plant and microalgae growth, examined how space radiation affects DNA sequences in plants, observed how microgravity changes human eye structure and cells in the body, and more. The research conducted aboard the orbiting laboratory advances scientific knowledge and demonstrates new technologies that enable us to prepare for human exploration of the Moon and Mars.
McClain and Ayers also completed a spacewalk on May 1, relocating a communications antenna, beginning the installation of a mounting bracket for a future International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Array, and other tasks.
What the fuck? (Score:5, Informative)
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What, what? Did I miss the sarcasm tag there?
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He's not just the face, he's also the chief engineer. He designed most of the rocket technology himself from scratch.
Elon Musk was able to build this in a cave! WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!
A real world Iron Man walks among us. ;^)
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If I had billions in funds to throw around I'm pretty sure I could hire enough competent people to make the company succeed.
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Re:What the fuck? (Score:5, Insightful)
When he was building SpaceX, there were a dozen large space companies who could totally have done what he did, before he did it. The tech, the ideas, and the need were all there. Those other companies were bigger and had more money, pre-existing links to government, hordes of engineers already on the payroll and previous experience building rockets.
Why didn't they do it? I dunno. They lacked something. Maybe it was the vision, or the initiative, or the leadership, or the personal drive, or the required salesmanship. But, the fact is that none of those other 1000-pound gorillas bothered to get off the couch to build re-usable rockets, and Musk managed to lead a startup company to make it happen. He knocked it out of the frikkin park.
And, then, he turned around, and accomplished the same thing, A SECOND TIME, with tesla. There are a dozen massive car companies who could have pulled off manufacturing a Tesla, long before Musk thought about an EV. But the leadership at those companies were happy to keep making IC cars until the end of civilization. They had the established factories, the design teams, and the tech. They had all the legos required to build the model, sitting in front of them on a table, but they couldn't be bothered to click the pieces together.
It's incredibly rare for anyone to succeed like that, even once in their lifetime. And, a lot of that type of success is manufactured. Most billionaires inherited their money or got a spot in the c-suite because of daddy's influence, they use that massive starting advantage to manage a single success, and they never reach the same level ever again. It's not easy. And Musk made it happen, twice.
He'll go down in history as the Henry Ford of this era. If starship actually succeeds under his watch, he'll go down in history as the guy who pushed his species to Mars. I'm not sure that one is gonna happen. He's completely distracted by his internet toys. spacex and tesla are world-beating companies, but X and grok are sub-par. He's the greatest industrial businessman of his generation, but he kind of sucks at computer/internet stuff. The starship project looks like it might be drifting at this point. Someone else might have to push that one past the finish line after Musk is out of the picture.
I'm rooting for the guy to succeed with spaceX, but it's not looking good.
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He'll go down in history as the Henry Ford of this era.
Henry Ford wasn't fond of the Jews either.
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And yet, people try to dismiss him because he waved the wrong way at a non-democrat event.
And I can imagine Elon Musk repeating that hand gesture and say, "I've had it up to here with those jokes!"
He did something on a similar vein by exploiting his accent during a Joe Rogan interview and saying something like, "I did nat zee that coming."
The people making too much of how Musk waved need to be mocked. Musk needs to set himself up for all kinds of ways to mock these people, such as maybe something like...
Interviewer: Tell me Mr. Musk, will your next Space-X launch be of the Falcon Heavy?
Musk:
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Its strange how people still think it is a coincidence that Musk founded Tesla, SpaceX, OPenAI/ChatGPT, xAI (
Was there meant to be a sarcasm tag in your post? Musk didn't found Tesla in any meaningful manner. He invested after the company had already been created. The same of the AI companies.
SpaceX may be one company he founded, after the original X/PayPal (note that he didn't found PayPal and, in fact, he had some ludicrous ideas of how the infrastructure should be changed after he came on board). Neuralink and the Boring Company: the only thing different from Musk and all the other people who had the same ideas
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2 NASA, 1 JAXA, 1 Roscosmos (Score:5, Informative)
The crewmembers were McClain and Nichole Ayers of NASA, Takuya Onishi of JAXA (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Kirill Peskov of Roscosmos, Russia's space agency.
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The crewmembers were McClain and Nichole Ayers of NASA, Takuya Onishi of JAXA (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Kirill Peskov of Roscosmos, Russia's space agency.
We have to remember that Musk invented the rocket, so all astronauts of all countries are Spacex astronauts. /s
"changes human eye structure and cells" (Score:2)
"the crew studied space-caused mental and physical changes in astronauts, blood flow from the brain to the heart" and their eyes. Apparently a long interval of weightlessness screws you up royally and we are now trying to find out exactly how much.
Off by a million times... (Score:2)
Does Trump agree on going on? (Score:2)
I would really be interested in his latest thoughts about this.
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