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NASA astronauts cap historic ‘odyssey’ aboard SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule

News Service
09:36 - 3/08/2020 Monday
Update: 10:36 - 3/08/2020 Monday
REUTERS
NASA astronaut Douglas Hurley waves to onlookers as he boards a plane at Naval Air Station Pensacola to return him and NASA astronaut Robert Behnken home to Houston a few hours after the duo landed in their SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft off the coast of Pensacola, Florida, U.S. August 2, 2020. NASA/Bill Ingalls/Handout via Reuters
NASA astronaut Douglas Hurley waves to onlookers as he boards a plane at Naval Air Station Pensacola to return him and NASA astronaut Robert Behnken home to Houston a few hours after the duo landed in their SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft off the coast of Pensacola, Florida, U.S. August 2, 2020. NASA/Bill Ingalls/Handout via Reuters

FLAG CAPTURED

NASA officials have said Crew Dragon, a pod with seven astronaut seats, was in a "very healthy" condition while docked at the space station, where astronauts conducted tests and monitored how the spacecraft performs in space.

Behnken and Hurley undocked from the orbital station late on Saturday to begin their trip home, waking at 7:40 a.m. Sunday to a recorded wakeup call from their sons.

"Good morning Dragon Endeavor," Hurley’s son said in a recorded message sent to the capsule. "I'm happy you went into space but I’m even happier that you’re coming back home."

NASA, aiming to galvanize a commercial space marketplace, awarded nearly $8 billion to SpaceX and Boeing Co collectively in 2014 to develop dueling space capsules, experimenting with a contract model that allows the space agency to buy astronaut seats from the two companies.

Billionaire entrepreneur Musk's SpaceX became the first private company to send humans to orbit with the launch of Behnken and Hurley.

"Congratulations SpaceX & NASA on completing first crewed Dragon flight!!," Musk wrote on Twitter after the splash-down, adding a U.S. flag emoji followed by "returned" — referring to a rivalry with Boeing Co over which company's astronaut crew would be the first to retrieve an American flag left on the space station in 2011, when the last crewed mission launched from U.S. soil.

Behnken and Hurley brought the flag back to Earth, stowed as cargo in Crew Dragon.

The landmark mission, which took off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center on May 31, marked the first time the U.S. space agency launched humans from American soil since its shuttle program retired in 2011. Since then, the United States has relied on Russia's space program to launch its astronauts to the space station.

"It was a great relief when I saw Bob and Doug come out of the capsule, smiling, thumbs up, looking very cheerful," SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell told reporters. "That was the good moment."

#NASA
#SpaceX
#Crew Dragon
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