NASA astronauts set to return from space station on SpaceX capsule
CAPE CANAVERAL - Four astronauts are on track to return home from the International Space Station this week, capping off a nearly six-month mission in space.
The astronauts - NASA's Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines, and Jessica Watkins, as well as Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti with the European Space Agency - are on target to depart from the space station aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule on Thursday morning. The team will spend a day free-flying through orbit before returning for a splashdown landing off the coast of Florida several hours later, at 5:43 p.m.
This mission marked a historic first on the ISS, as Jessica Watkins became the first Black woman to join the space station crew for an extended stay.
More than a dozen Black Americans - including five Black women - have traveled to space since Guion Bluford became the first to do so in 1983. The ISS has hosted more than 250 astronauts since 2000, but no Black woman has previously had the opportunity to live and work in space for an extended period until now.
Aerospace company SpaceX developed the Crew Dragon spacecraft under a $2.6 billion contract with NASA as part of the Commercial Crew Program.
The idea behind the program was to move NASA into a customer role - allowing private companies to design, build and test a new spacecraft to serve NASA astronauts while still giving the company ownership over the vehicle.
For nearly a decade after the retirement of NASA's Space Shuttle Program in 2011, the United States had to rely on purchasing seats on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to get its astronauts to and from the ISS. SpaceX renewed orbital human spaceflight capabilities from US soil in 2020 with the launch of its Demo-2 mission, which carried two NASA astronauts to the space station.
Crew-4 is the fifth flight SpaceX has carried out as part of its NASA partnership, and the space agency has continued purchasing additional flights from the company led by founder and CEO Elon Musk.
The Crew-4 astronauts' return to Earth comes less than a week after the Crew-5 astronauts arrived on a separate SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. The two mission teams have spent the past few days in a brief handoff period to ensure a smooth transition between the crews.
Officials at NASA have continued to extend the agency's partnership with SpaceX, growing the value of their overall deal to encompass 15 total crewed missions at a value of more than $4.9 billion.
Since SpaceX developed the Crew Dragon under a fixed-price commercial contract, however, it retains ownership over the vehicle. That means the privately held company also has the ability to sell seats to whomever it wishes. SpaceX has already conducted two Crew Dragon missions funded entirely by wealthy thrill-seekers. And there are future private missions in the works.
