Four astronauts inside a capsule built by SpaceX streaked across the Florida night sky like a meteor before splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico on Monday night. The water landing capped an eventful six-month stay on the International Space Station.
The space travelers were part of a mission called Crew-2: Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur of NASA; Akihiko Hoshide of JAXA, Japan’s space agency; and Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency.
“It’s great to be back to planet Earth,” Kimbrough, Crew-2’s commander, said to SpaceX mission control from inside the capsule after it and four large parachutes fluttered down into still waters near Pensacola, Florida. He and his fellow astronauts left the space station at 2.05 p.m. Eastern time Monday afternoon, and returned to Earth at 10:33 p.m.
Two parachutes deployed as planned to brake the capsule’s speed, then four more replaced them, with one remaining scrunched for nearly a minute before inflating. All chutes eventually deployed, plunking Crew Dragon into calm waters.
“The return looked spotless,” Kathy Lueders, NASA’s space operations chief, said in remarks on the agency’s livestream. She said engineering teams will examine the one “laggy” chute that did not immediately unfurl, adding that it was “behavior we’ve seen multiple times in other tests.”
The capsule, nicknamed Endeavour, bobbed in the ocean as recovery teams swarmed around and lifted it onto a recovery ship. Within about an hour of the spacecraft’s landing, crews helped the smiling astronauts out of the capsule one by one and onto stretchers as they started reacclimating to Earth’s gravity.
The trip was the fourth safe return to Earth for Crew Dragon, a gumdrop-shaped astronaut capsule developed by SpaceX as a replacement for the space shuttle with roughly $3 billion in funding from NASA. The spacecraft is expected to save the agency money, as NASA is no longer required to buy expensive seats for its astronauts on Russia’s Soyuz rockets.
The journey was not without difficulties. Last week, NASA ordered the crew not to use the capsule’s toilet for the duration of their time on board. Engineers on the ground first detected a leaking toilet tube in another SpaceX capsule in September. The malfunction was confined to a compartment within the spacecraft’s floor, and did not affect the cabin.
But NASA declared the toilet of the Crew Dragon at the space station to be off-limits until it could be fixed. That meant that the crew either had to hold it, or use astronaut-grade diapers built into their flight suits as a contingency.
“Of course that’s suboptimal, but we are prepared to manage that in the time that we’re onboard Dragon on the way home,” McArthur, the Crew-2 mission pilot, said during a news conference Friday.
The crew managed many other challenges and responsibilities during their time in orbit.
Shortly after Crew-2 launched in April, SpaceX mission control alerted them that a piece of space debris was projected to whiz by the capsule. The astronauts were instructed to “immediately” get back in their flight suits and lower their helmet visors.
Nothing ever came close to the capsule, and the crew safely reached the space station on April 24.
Days later, US Space Command, which tracks objects in orbit, determined that the alert was the result of a “reporting error” and “that there was never a collision threat because there was no object at risk of colliding with the capsule.” Still, the incident renewed discussion about the growing threat of space debris and other clutter in low-Earth orbit.
In July, Russia launched a new science module to be attached to the space station’s Russian segment. Just after it docked, the module, named Nauka, erroneously fired a set of thrusters for roughly 15 minutes, spinning the football-field-size laboratory 1 1/2 revolutions before coming to a stop upside down.
The accident sent mission control teams in Houston and Moscow scrambling to get the station back in its normal position. The Crew-2 astronauts rushed back into their Crew Dragon capsule in case they needed to escape.
“In case something really bad did happen, we were ready to go and undock, if that was necessary,” Kimbrough said during Friday’s news conference. “Of course it wasn’t, thank goodness.”
A similar incident occurred in October involving another Russian spacecraft attached to the space station, although it seemed less severe than the first one.
While Crew-2 and its fellow space station occupants encountered hazards in orbit, they also kept busy with their typical duties of research and maintenance.
One component of their work even included some play: a taco night spiced up with freshly harvested chiles. The peppers were leftovers from a study examining crop cultivation in space. McArthur, who combined the chiles with fajita beef, rehydrated tomatoes and artichokes, called them the “best space tacos yet.”
The astronauts worked on hundreds of scientific investigations during their six-month stay aboard the orbital laboratory, from ultrasonic tweezers, which use sound to move small objects, to exploring real-time protein crystal growth under a microscope as part of a study into new drugs that can treat diseases.
The Crew-2 astronauts also witnessed the making of a feature length movie backed by Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos. A Russian actress and a director launched to the space station on Oct. 5 for a 12-day shoot aboard the station for their movie, “The Challenge.” The film is about a mission to rescue an ailing astronaut, who was played by Oleg Novitsky, an actual Russian astronaut on the station.
When the Crew-2 astronauts departed Monday, only a single crew of three astronauts remained on the space station. It’s a small head count for the orbital lab, which has had as many as 13 astronauts aboard at once, but usually has seven crew members aboard these days. The last time the space station held just three astronauts was in April 2020.
Mark Vande Hei, a NASA astronaut, and two Russian astronauts, Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov, will hold down the fort for at least four days until four more astronauts from NASA and SpaceX’s Crew-3 mission arrive Thursday at 7.10 p.m. Eastern time. Their arrival has been delayed by weather as well as what NASA described as one astronaut’s “minor medical issue,” which it said was unrelated to Covid-19.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
