Four ISS astronauts landed off Florida

As a live stream from the US space agency NASA showed, the space capsule touched down off the coast of the US state of Florida. On board the Crew Dragon were Russian Anna Kikina, US astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, and Japanese Koichi Wakata. About 20 hours earlier, Team Crew-5 undocked from the International Space Station. The undocking had previously been postponed several times due to the weather.

Rare American-Russian cooperation

The Crew Dragon was launched with a rocket from Elon Musk’s private space company SpaceX in October from the Cape Canaveral cosmodrome – it was the first joint launch by NASA astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut from American soil since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine. Cooperation on the ISS is one of the few remaining areas where the US and Russia still cooperate, even after the Russian invasion of Ukraine over a year ago.

Also on board the ISS are Russian cosmonauts Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, as well as NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and Crew-6, which arrived ten days ago and consists of Americans Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg, Russian Andrei Fedyaev and the Emirati Sultan al-Niyadia.

kle/ehl (afp, dpa)