UAE Astronaut Sultan AlNeyadi to Return Home to Earth on Sept 2; How It Will Unfold
Eleven astronauts and cosmonauts are now living together aboard the International Space Station (ISS) before UAE’s Sultan AlNeyadi and the rest of Crew-6 return to Earth this weekend.
The newest ISS flight engineers are Crew-7 members Jasmin Moghbeli from NASA, Andreas Mogensen from the European Space Agency, Satoshi Furukawa (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), and Russian cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov.
While the quartet, who arrived on Sunday, are familiarising themselves with ISS safety procedures and getting used to life in microgravity, Crew-6 (AlNeyadi, Nasa astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev) are preparing for their journey back home no earlier than Saturday, September 2, according to NASA.
Congratulations to Crew-7 on their safe arrival at the @Space_Station. In the next few days, they will receive the handover from Sultan and his crewmates. Sultan and Crew-6 are now preparing to return to Earth, and we are ready to welcome them back! https://t.co/0X3pcws4jz
— Salem AlMarri سالم حميد المري (@Salem_HAlMarri) August 28, 2023
Crew-6 docked on March 3. During their mission, they conducted three spacewalks, including AlNeyadi’s historic spacewalk outside the ISS on April 28 this year. They also completed hundreds of experiments on plant genetics and physiology in microgravity to prepare humans for exploration beyond low Earth orbit.
Crew-6 is also currently conducting a handover to Crew-7, who will also live and work 400 kilometres above the Earth for six months. On Monday, the new crew members were joined by station commander Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos and AlNeyadi to review the location of emergency hardware throughout the orbital laboratory.
NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, whose stay at the ISS has been extended for another six months, checked out a Dragon pressure suit in the Endeavour spacecraft with assistance from AlNeyadi.
The soon-to-be departing Crew-6 has already reviewed their departure activities and Dragon deorbit procedures. They will undock from ISS Harmony’s forward port aboard Endeavour on September 2 and splashdown off the coast of Florida about 24 hours later.
Splashdown is the process of landing a spacecraft by parachute in a large body of water, such as the ocean, since landing in water helps absorb some of the impact during re-entry, the capsule (Endeavour) can reach a speed of over 27,000 kilometres per hour. To safely land the crew aboard, parachutes are used to slow their descent before they officially splash down into the ocean.
Splashdown is used by NASA missions because of the agency’s easy access to the ocean. Returning crews of Russian and Chinese missions return over land and incorporate other safety measures, such as rocket boosters, to slow and reduce landing speeds even more.
Hazza AlMansoori, the first Emirati who went to space, returned over land aboard a Russian Soyuz MS-12 space capsule that landed about 150km southeast of the Kazakh town of Dzhezkazgan on October 3, 2019.
