In the early hours of this Tuesday – at 6:06, Spanish peninsular time – the mission Crew-9 He has abandoned the International Space Station (ISS). With an automatic decoupling of his capsule, he has begun return to Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, the two NASA astronauts who and have passed there more than 9 months. The end point to that odyssey already has a day and time: today, around 23, when your ship should perch on the Atlantic Ocean, if time allows it and if you successfully conclude its re -entry to Earth, after a delicate precision aeronautical maneuvers chain.
With them, the American Nick Hague and the Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov return. In the same space capsule in which they return today – a Dragon ship of the Spacex company – and their side carried two empty seats. And is that two turns back of the Crew-9 They were reserved for Williams and Wilmore, who were already known worldwide as astronauts trapped In space. The ship in which they had arrived and NASA decided not to bring them back in it.
After the normal six -month stay at the ISS of Hague and Gorbunov, the four astronauts undertake their return to land that arrived at the station in the early hours of last Sunday. Less than two days of transferring functions and responsibilities between both crews have been necessary before starting the return maneuvers.
First thing in the morning of this Tuesday, Williams, Wilmore, Hague and Gorbunov were already in their dragon capsule – which coincidentally bears the name of Freedomfreedom in English – ready to close the hatch that separates it from the orbital international laboratory. They did it at 4:26. After almost three hours of a multitude of checks, decoupling between them has occurred. With a series soft lit of engines, which the ship produces autonomously – without the intervention of astronauts – will gradually separate a speed of about 27,600 kilometers per hour.
From there, alone, the ship will begin to descend little by little to an increasingly low orbit. This phase will last about 16 hours. Depending on the weather conditions in the destination, about 22:11 – Spanish peninsular – a powerful ignition of the dragon capsule engines should take place will be the most delicate part of this flight. Overcome the reentry, the engines and finally the parachutes will continue to brake the capsule until it is possessed on the Atlantic.
The shocking is scheduled at 22:57 off the coast of Florida (USA). The capsule will be floating until a ship picks it up minutes later. If everything goes well, the Crew-9that it was going to be a routine mission of replacement of crew of the space station. But for Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore it has become the way out of the Culebrón Space that starred without wanting last summer. After several postponements, NASA then took a spacex dragon; And for that he had to make a hole in the rotation of crew members of the ISS. Today Williams and Wilmore occupy the place of Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson, that change of plans left the two astronauts trapped on Earth.
