NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley plummeted into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola Sunday afternoon. Their once white spacecraft, now a toasty brown from the heat of re-entry, marked the country’s first water landing since 1975.
It was a milestone in NASA’s years-long effort to have commercial companies, rather than the government, ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX, founded by billionaire Elon Musk, is the first private company to own and operate a vehicle trusted to launch — and now land — NASA astronauts.
The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket on May 30, began its return journey Saturday, separating from the International Space Station at 6:35 p.m. CDT.
On HoustonChronicle.com: NASA, SpaceX pull off first astronaut liftoff from U.S. soil since 2011
It was traveling 17,500 miles per hour before re-entering Earth’s atmosphere. Then heat, up to 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit, and drag slowed the spacecraft to about 350 miles per hour, where two drogue parachutes deployed to slow and stabilize the spacecraft at about 18,000 feet. Crew Dragon was down to 119 mph and at about 6,000 feet when the four main parachutes deployed.
The capsule was traveling roughly 15 miles per hour when splashdown occurred at 1:48 p.m. CDT. It’s not a soft landing, especially after two months in microgravity. Commentators for the re-entry and splashdown described it as a fender bender.
Astronaut Jack Lousma has previously described hitting the water as a “train wreck.” His capsule got turned upside down when it returned from the Skylab space station in 1973.
“After two months in space and being weightless, we were now hanging from the ceiling looking downward in the water,” Lousma said in an oral history with NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
The Apollo-era capsules had balloon-like devices to flip them over. The Crew Dragon has a water ballast that pumps water into bags to turn the capsule upright if needed — it was not needed Sunday.
The capsule carrying Joseph Kerwin, who also visited Skylab in 1973, stayed upright upon landing. But it gently bobbed in the ocean for a while making Kerwin, who decided a strawberry drink would help with hydration, seasick.
“If you want to see a sick puppy, I mean, somebody who's not feeling good, there's a photograph of Joe Kerwin,” his crewmate Paul Weitz recalled in his oral history.
To help with the water landing, Hurley said the astronauts will “do our fluid loading” — drink a salt and water concoction — prior to re-entry as this can help offset some effects caused by microgravity. Astronauts are sometimes light-headed or faint upon re-entry, and some are unable to remain upright when standing.
Such effects are caused by changes to the human body while in microgravity, including a drop in blood volume (the total amount of fluid in arteries, veins, chambers of the heart, etc.). The astronauts are healthy in space, as this is the body’s appropriate response up there, but upon returning to Earth they are, in essence, dehydrated and anemic.
The salt-and-water drink helps restore fluids and jumpstart their blood volume level for the initial shock of being back in gravity, though some astronauts still get light-headed or faint.
SpaceX and NASA had Behnken and Hurley’s spacecraft on the deck of a recovery ship 30 minutes after splashdown, though at one point the recovery team had to request private boaters clear the area.
Behnken and Hurley said they were feeling good shortly after landing, but if they started to feel queasy the astronauts had “hardware” onboard.
“Just like on an airliner, there are bags if you need them and we’ll have those handy,” Hurley said during a news conference prior to departing the space station. “We’ll probably have some towels handy as well. If that needs to happen, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened in a space vehicle. It would be the first time in this particular vehicle.”
There’s supposed to be another news conference with the astronauts on Tuesday, and Hurley has promised to keep the public apprised.
NASA’s history in water landings partly stem from where it launches — along the coast. If a Mercury, Gemini or Apollo capsule needed to be separated from its rocket during launch, the capsule’s abort path would be over the water, said Phil Smith, a space industry analyst at Bryce Space and Technology.
The Russian Soyuz spacecraft, on the other hand, is landlocked and needed an abort capability to land on solid ground. That’s a reason why the Soyuz lands in Kazakhstan, Smith said.
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Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, which is also being developed to carry NASA astronauts to the International Space Station, is the first U.S. capsule designed to land on solid ground. This vehicle has not yet launched people. But if it needed to abort a launch, the spacecraft is designed to land in water.
There are pros and cons to landing on the water and on land. Art Dula, a Houston-based space lawyer who founded a now-defunct space tourism company that owns three Russian Almaz spacecraft, said water landings are less jarring. But saltwater is corrosive.
There were concerns that Behnken and Hurley’s return would be derailed by Tropical Storm Isaias, previously a hurricane, but the storm ultimately stayed along Florida’s east coast and left the west coast open for landing. SpaceX had potential landing sites on both coasts.
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NASA, SpaceX bring astronauts home in Gulf of Mexico splashdown - Houston Chronicle
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