Moscow. May 2. INTERFAX.RU – The American manned spacecraft Crew Dragon-1, after a 6.5-hour autonomous flight following undocking from the International Space Station (ISS), began descent from orbit for the upcoming splashdown in the Atlantic on Sunday, NASA reported.
After dropping the cargo hold on the Crew Dragon-1, the braking engines were turned on to enter the Earth's atmosphere.
The spacecraft descent capsule with NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi, after deploying all parachutes, should splash down at 02:57 US East Coast time (09:57 Moscow time) in Mexico bay south of Panama City, Florida.
In the area of the planned landing is the search and rescue vessel GO Navigator, which will lift the capsule out of the water on its board using a hydraulic lifting device, after which its crew will be retrieved from Crew Dragon-1. The splashdown area is also guarded by two US Coast Guard patrol boats.
The Crew Dragon-1 crew worked on the ISS for six months. It was the first regular flight into orbit of a new American reusable manned spacecraft developed by SpaceX under a commercial contract with NASA.
Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov and NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hai, who arrived at the ISS on April 9 on the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft, and also NASA astronauts who arrived at the station on April 24 on Crew Dragon-2, continue to work on board the ISS Megan MacArthur and Shane Kimbrough, ESA astronaut Thomas Peske and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide.
