SpaceX’s Crew-5 mission returned safely to Earth, NASA confirmed in an official statement. On Saturday night, March 11, the company’s Dragon Endurance spacecraft splashed down off the coast of Florida after a five-month stay on the International Space Station (ISS).
The capsule was carrying NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann, Japan’s Koichi Wakata and Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina, according to the report posted on the Engadget website.
The four spent 157 days in orbit during an ISS rotation that went down in the history books. The Crew-5 mission saw Mann, a member of the Wailaki people, become the first Native American woman to fly into space.
Cooperation between the US and Russia
It was also the first time a Russian cosmonaut had flown aboard a private US spacecraft, a possible milestone after NASA and Roscosmos signed a seat-sharing agreement last year amid rising US-Russian tensions over to the war in Ukraine.
