Without a functioning toilet on board their Crew Dragon capsule, four astronauts undocked from the International Space Station ISS and landed in the sea off the US state of Florida on Tuesday morning (CET). The so-called Crew-2 consisted of the French ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet, the NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur and the Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, as the US space agency NASA announced.
After decoupling, the capsule of the SpaceX space company from Elon Musk flew around the space station again to take photos for possible upcoming repairs. Because the toilet on board was broken, the four astronauts, who had been on the ISS since April, had to wear a kind of diaper when they return. That was "suboptimal," McArthur said in advance at a press conference. "But there are many small challenges on space travel and we are ready to get it under control."
According to some media reports, the parachute of the capsule apparently did not open completely evenly during landing. Thus, one of the four parachutes inflated only with a slight delay. The crew was still able to land safely, but they will take a closer look at the behavior of the parachute, officials said.
The undocking of the crew-2 had originally been planned for Sunday, but was postponed to Monday at short notice due to bad weather conditions. After the successful landing, the German astronaut Matthias Maurer and his crew-3 could set off for the ISS on the morning of November 11 (CET) at the earliest.
The start of the 51-year-old Saarländer was to take place on the last weekend in October, but has been postponed several times-among other things because of bad weather and a "smaller medical problem" of a crew member. Maurer would be the first German astronaut to fly back into space for three years. Together with NASA colleagues Thomas Marshburn, Raja Chari and Kayla Barron, he is to start from the Cape Canaveral space station in Florida. These four astronauts are also said to transport a crew dragoon capsule.
Actually, a handover between Crew-2 and Crew-3 on board the ISS was planned. That this now fails, but is not bad, had said NASA astronaut Kimbrough at a press conference. The task will now be taken over by NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei, who came to the ISS in April together with cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov. (dam)
