SpaceX has landed on planet earth with four astronauts to complete a 200-day space station mission.
The astronauts have landed in the Gulf of Mexico off the Pensacola coast, Florida. Recovery boats were present there to welcome them. Within an hour after landing, the astronauts were out of the capsule and exchanged their greetings with the team on the recovery ship.
In the beginning, the newcomer astronauts were scheduled to launch first, but because of bad weather and an astronaut’s undisclosed medical condition NASA has changed the predetermined order.
German astronaut Matthias Maurer had tweeted about the two crews that won’t overlap at the space station.
The four astronauts of SpaceX, Shane Kimbrough, Megan McArthur, Akihiko Hoshide and Thomas Pesquet would have landed on Monday morning, but high wind in the recovery zone have delayed their return.
Thomas Pesquet had tweeted about the magical view of twinkling city lights on the night time side of Earth.
Before leaving the international space station, the four of them spin around the space station and took pictures.
But their journey wasn’t that comfortable at the time of returning as the toilet of their capsule had been broken and the astronomers had to rely on diapers for the eight-hour trip home.
There had been bits of discomforts and threats in through out their journey. In April, Mission Control has warned them about a piece of space junk may collide with their capsule, but it was a false alarm. In July, the Russian lab caught fire and sent the whole station into a spin. The four astronauts took refuge in their docked SpaceX capsule at that time.
