The Crew Dragon spacecraft has successfully landed in the Atlantic Ocean * The next demonstration mission will already be manned

The US manned space program passed a major milestone this week when SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft returned to Earth after a five-day mission docked at the International Space Station

The US manned space program passed a major milestone this week when SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft returned to Earth after a five-day mission docked at the International Space Station.

On Friday, 8/3/19 at 16:45 Israel time, about six hours after it left the space station, the spacecraft, which this time was still unmanned, fell about 350 km to the coast of Cape Canaveral in Florida. SpaceX drank the spacecraft from the waters of the Atlantic Ocean and led it back to port on the rescue ship.

"Today's success and return of the Crew Dragon capsule after its first mission to the International Space Station marked another important milestone in the future of manned space," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. "I want to once again congratulate the NASA crews And - SpaceX for an amazing week. Our plan to fly crew members through business entities is a big step closer to launching American astronauts, on American launchers from Earth. American. I am proud of the great work that has been done to bring us to this point."

In the mission, dubbed DEMO-1 as a demonstration flight, the Crew Dragon spacecraft was unmanned. It was launched on March 2 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and set several initial records in less than a week:

• The first spacecraft built for commercial purposes and operated by an American crew, with the launcher also taking off from American soil to the International Space Station.
• The first commercial spacecraft capable of carrying humans docked at the International Space Station.
• First autonomous docking of an American spacecraft at the International Space Station.
• First use of a new design for adapters connecting the space station and the Crew Dragon spacecraft. This design will also be used by the Orion spacecraft for NASA's future mission to the Moon.

NASA and SpaceX teams gathered in the early morning hours at the company's headquarters in Hawthorne, California, to monitor the landing and journey of the spacecraft in the ocean.

"We were all very excited to see the entry into the atmosphere, the deployment of the tow chute and the main chute and finally, the contact with the water. Everything happened exactly on time, as we expected. It was beautiful"

Re-entry, parachute and drogue deploy, main deploy, splashdown - everything happened exactly. It was right on time, as we expected it to be. It was beautiful," said Benji Reed, Crew Dragon mission manager at SpaceX.

This is an important step toward verifying the performance of the Demo-1 systems, but there is more work to prepare the spacecraft to fly astronauts.

Nevertheless, there was a passenger on this flight - a shop window mannequin resembling a woman in a space suit, which was named Ripley, a tribute to the movie The Eighth Passenger. Ripley was equipped with sensors that provided data that would allow to assess the possible effects on humans who would fly in the spacecraft. After - SpaceX will process data From this mission, teams will begin preparing Crew Dragon for its next mission – a test flight of the Demo-2 spacecraft this summer It will carry NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, who will confirm that the spacecraft is indeed ready for routine operational missions.

"For the first time, we did an end-to-end test and saw how the people, the equipment, the processes and the procedures work together and that's important for putting people on board the spacecraft," said NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins, who is scheduled to go to the space station in the first operational spacecraft of the Crew Dragon series following Demo- 2. "I'm personally very eager to hear how Ripley felt after she was taken out of the capsule and put on the ship."

Summary of the journey of the DEMO-1 spacecraft