SpaceX craft departs ISS for Earth

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WASHINGTON, Aug 2, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – The SpaceX Crew Dragon
spacecraft shoved off from the International Space Station on Saturday
with two US astronauts on board, beginning their journey back to Earth
despite a storm threatening Florida.

NASA footage showed the capsule drifting slowly away from the ISS
in the darkness of space, ending a two month stay for the first US
astronauts to reach the orbiting lab on an American spacecraft in
nearly a decade.

“And they are off!” the US space agency tweeted, with Doug Hurley
and Bob Behnken set to splash down Sunday.

“(They) will spend one more night in space prior to returning to
their homeland, Earth,” NASA tweeted.

Their proposed splash-down sites are off the coast of western
Florida’s panhandle, while tropical storm Isaias is headed toward the
state’s east coast.

NASA opted to go ahead with bringing the pair home despite the
threat of Isaias, which was downgraded to a tropical storm from a
hurricane on Saturday.

The agency later added the capsule was confirmed to be “on a safe
trajectory.”

“Now is the entry, descent and splashdown phase after we undock,
hopefully a little bit later today,” Hurley said in a farewell
ceremony aboard the ISS that was broadcast on NASA TV.

“The teams are working really hard, especially with the dynamics of
the weather over the next few days around Florida,” he said.

Earlier, during the ISS ceremony, Behnken said that “the hardest
part was getting us launched. But the most important part is bringing
us home.”

Addressing his son and Hurley’s son, he held up a toy dinosaur that
the children chose to send on the mission and said: “Tremor The
Apatosaurus is headed home soon and he’ll be with your dads.”

Behnken later tweeted: “All my bags are packed, I’m ready to go.”

– ‘Exciting day’ –

Mission chief Chris Cassidy called it an “exciting day” and hailed
the importance of having a new means to transport astronauts.

The mission, which blasted off May 30, marked the first time a
crewed spaceship had launched into orbit from American soil since 2011
when the space shuttle program ended.

It was also the first time a private company has flown to the ISS
carrying astronauts.

The US has paid SpaceX and aerospace giant Boeing a total of about
$7 billion for their “space taxi” contracts.

But Boeing’s program has floundered badly after a failed test run
late last year, which left SpaceX, a company founded only in 2002, as
clear frontrunner.

For the past nine years, US astronauts traveled exclusively on
Russian Soyuz rockets, for a price of around $80 million per seat.