SpaceX’s Crew-5 mission has returned safely to Earth. On Saturday night, the company’s Dragon “Endurance” spacecraft splashed down off the coast of Florida after a five-month stay on the International Space Station. The capsule was carrying NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann, Koichi Wakata of Japan, and Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina.
The four spent 157 days in orbit during an ISS rotation that went down in the history books. As the Crew-5 mission saw Mann, a member of the Wailaki people, become the . It was also the first time a Russian cosmonaut had flown aboard a private US spacecraft, a possible milestone after NASA and Roscosmos last year amid rising US-Russia tensions over the war in Ukraine.
For Wakata, the flight was his fifth return from space, a Japanese record. The mission also marked Endurance’s second orbital trip after the capsule successfully carried the crew back to Earth last fall. The spacecraft will now return to SpaceX’s Dragon Lair facility in Florida for safety checks and refitting before its next flight.
Not on the flight was NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, who flew to the ISS on MS-22, the Russian Soyuz spacecraft that late last year following an apparent micrometeor strike. The Endurance crew temporarily upgraded their voyage to carry Rubio in the event of an ISS emergency evacuation after Roscomos determined that the MS-22 could only safely carry two people. They later removed those modifications after Russia sent a replacement Soyuz spacecraft to bring Rubio and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin back to Earth.
