the times | Monday August 3 2020 2GM 7
News
America’s historic return to crewed
space flight was complete last night
after two Nasa astronauts known as the
space dads made their homecoming,
splashing down off Florida after a
26 million-mile odyssey.
Colonel Doug Hurley and Colonel
Bob Behnken’s return to Earth aboard
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule began
with a wake-up call from their children
and ended with a parachute-assisted
drop into the Gulf of Mexico after a
fiery 17,500mph freefall through the
atmosphere.
“Welcome back to planet Earth.
Thanks for flying SpaceX,” mission
control told the astronauts over the
radio as the spacecraft bobbed in the
water.
“It’s truly our honour and privilege,”
Colonel Hurley, 53, replied. “On behalf
of the Dragon Endeavour, congrats to
Nasa and SpaceX... all is well.”
It was the first time that a crewed
spacecraft had made an ocean landing
since 1975, when America and Russia’s
joint Apollo-Soyuz mission ended with
a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
Yesterday’s return marked the end of
a two-month test mission for the Crew
Dragon capsule, which was built and
operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX com-
pany under contract to Nasa, making it
the first commercial spaceship to take
astronauts into orbit.
Its launch to the International Space
Station in May was the first time that
US astronauts had flown into orbit on a
Colonel Bob Behnken’s return to Earth
will not be the end of his family’s space
adventures.
The splashdown of his test mission
opens the gates for a new era of space
flight in which commercial providers
shuttle crew to and from the Inter-
national Space Station (ISS) while Nasa
focuses on its ambitions to return astro-
nauts to the moon. Among the crew
lined up for Crew Dragon’s upcoming
missions is his wife, Megan McArthur.
Crew Dragon’s first fully operational
mission, Crew-1, will take four astro-
nauts to the ISS for about six months in
September, including Shannon Walker,
the first woman to fly on Crew Dragon.
That will be followed in spring 2021 byJacqui GoddardMegan McArthur, 48, is an
astronaut like her husbandWhy the final frontier is a family affair
Crew-2, piloted by Ms McArthur, 48,
a veteran astronaut, aboard the
same capsule that brought her
husband home yesterday. “So ex-
cited to get to fly with these guys,”
she stated, after her crew line-up
was announced last month.
She and Colonel Behnken
met in 2000, when they
were both in the same as-
tronaut training class at
Nasa’s Johnson Space
Centre in Houston, Tex-
as. An oceanographer
and engineer prior to
her selection as an as-
tronaut, Ms McArthurhas flown one previous mission in
2009 aboard the Space Shuttle
Atlantis, to service the Hubble
Space Telescope.
She is also the deputy chief of
Nasa’s astronaut office and has
spent recent days at SpaceX’s
headquarters in Hawthorne,
California, learning how
to fly Crew Dragon
alongside the mission’s
commander, Shane
Kimbrough. They will
be joined on the mis-
sion by Akihiko Ho-
shide, who is Japa-
nese, and Thomas
Pesquet, a French as-
tronaut with the Euro-
pean Space Agency.NASASpace dads splash down into history
Jacqui Goddard Miami US spacecraft from US soil since 2011,
when Nasa retired its space shuttle fleet
after 30 years in operation.
The capsule undocked from the
International Space Station at 12.35am
yesterday, 267 miles above Johannes-
burg. Chris Cassidy, the American com-
mander of the ISS, who will return to
Earth in October alongside two Rus-
sian cosmonauts, rang the ship’s bell to
mark his colleagues’ departure. “Safe
travels and have a successful landing,”
he told them as they pulled away.
A series of engine burns followed to
manoeuvre the capsule away from the
ISS and into the correct orbit for land-
ing. As the autonomous spacecraft took
care of the flying, the pair settled down
for an eight-hour sleep shift that ended
with a recorded alarm call from their
sons piped over the ground-to-space
radio link.
“Good morning, Dragon Endeavour.
I’m happy that you went into space, but
I’m even happier that you’re coming
back home,” Colonel Hurley’s son, Jack,
10, said.
Colonel Behnken, 50, who before he
launched had told his six-year-old son,
Theodore, they would celebrate his safereturn by getting a dog, was urged: “Rise
and shine, daddy. We love you, we can’t
wait to see you... Daddy, wake up!
“Don’t worry, you can sleep in tomor-
row. Hurry home so we can go get my
dog.”
Mr Musk, who founded SpaceX in
2002, positioned himself at a console in
the front row of SpaceX’s mission
control room in Hawthorne, California,
alongside Gwynne Shotwell, the com-
pany’s president, for the re-entry.
“Coming in hot,” he tweeted, as Crew
Dragon prepared for its final engine
burns, jettisoned its trunk and movedtowards its critical interface with the
top of the atmosphere. As it plunged to
Earth, hot plasma enveloped the space-
craft, scorching its once white exterior
to the colour of a toasted marshmallow
and blacking out communications with
mission control for six minutes.
Inside the air-conditioned cabin, the
astronauts remained at a comfortable
24C, clad in air-cooled, pressurised
suits, pushed down in their seats by
high gravitational forces as the capsule
sped from its vantage point above New
Zealand to its splashdown point off
Florida in 37 minutes. SpaceX likened it
to “a mild rollercoaster”.
“I’m expecting a little bit of vomiting
to maybe happen in the end,” Colonel
Behnken had admitted before the mis-
sion launched, saying he would look
forward to a little travel sickness as a
“celebratory event”.
Hopes of bringing down Crew
Endeavour off Cape Canaveral, Florida
— America’s gateway to space, from
where it launched in May — were
dashed by a low-grade hurricane that
was downgraded to a tropical storm
working its way up the state’s east coast.
Instead, SpaceX chose one of six
back-up landing zones off Pensacola,
along the state’s Gulf of Mexico coast,
which met the strict weather criteria re-
quired. Drogue chutes and parachutes
were deployed in the final 18,000ft,
slowing the capsule to a 15mph splash-
down.
President Trump tweeted: “Astro-
nauts complete first splashdown in 45
years. Very exciting!”Coming home
1 12.35am* yesterday Departure
from ISS at an altitude of 263 miles2 6.51pm Trunk
jettison3 6.56pm Start of 12-minute
engine burn to begin the
17,500mph re-entry6 7.48pm^
Splashdown4 7.44pm Drogue parachutes
deploy. Crew Dragon is at
18,000ft and moving at 350mph5 7.45pm Main parachutes
deploy at 6,000ft while
Crew Dragon is travelling
at 119mphPensacola*All times are UK timeThe orbitDoug Hurley
emerges from
the Crew Dragon
capsule, right,
after a 64-day
mission in space.
He and Bob
Behnken began
the day with calls
from their
children before
arriving in the
Gulf of Mexico