The crew-1 astronauts successfully and safely return to the home. The commander of crew-1, Michael Hopkins and his fellow astronauts Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi depart from the space-facing port on Saturday at 8:35 p.m. EDT.
This splashdown was only the second piloted water landing for the post-shuttle commercial crew of NASA, and it was the third night splashdown in space history.
When the Dragon Capsule drops out of orbit, FOUR giant parachutes opened, and the astronauts gently and smoothly splashed down at Panama City, Florida, at 2:56 a.m., closing a mission of 168 days.
Astronauts received a message from the company’s Capsule communicator, in which the communicator is welcoming the astronauts back to Earth.
And Hopkins answered that it is great to be back on Earth.
As the capsule splashed down, the whole person was present to help them get out of the spacecraft.
Glover thanked the NASA, SpaceX, and USCG team in a tweet for a safe and successful journey to Earth. After this successful splashdown, some astronauts undergo some medical tests, and they made phone calls to their family and friends. And then, they were taken to the Johnson Space Center in Houston by helicopter.
This landing was planned in daylight, but the bad weather at the splashdown site make them land at night because mild winds are expected on the early morning Sunday. So due to these conditions, NASA and SpaceX agreed to the splashdown of Crew-1.
The most current nighttime water landing before this happened in October 1976. That splashdown happened when two cosmonauts failed to dock in space. And they have to make a splashdown into the large lake in Kazakhstan. And after nine hours, the recovery crew reached there to rescue cosmonauts.