The crew of the Crew 5 mission, sent into space by a SpaceX rocket on behalf of NASA, returned to Earth on Saturday after a five-month mission on the International Space Station, images from the American agency show.
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The Endurance capsule landed just after 9 p.m. off the west coast of Florida in the Gulf of Mexico, with Japan’s Koichi Wakata, Russia’s Anna Kikina and NASA employees Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada on board.
Crew-5, launched last October from Cape Canaveral, Fla., was Koichi Wakata’s fifth space mission and the first for the other members, making Nicole Mann the first Native American woman to be sent into space, NASA said.
Before leaving the ISS, the crew met that of Crew-6, who departed from the same location on March 1 to take over.
Less than a week earlier, a Russian Soyuz rocket took off from Kazakhstan to replace the Russian MS-22 spacecraft that was damaged while docking with the ISS.
The three members of MS-22, an American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts, were originally scheduled to return to Earth in late March after a six-month mission, but will ultimately stay for almost a year.
Cooperation on the International Space Station is one of the last areas Washington and Moscow have continued to work together since Russia invaded Ukraine just over a year ago.