The astronauts who were stranded aboard the International Space Station have splashed down on Earth following their unexpected 8-month stay.
It wasn’t quite Lost in Space—they weren’t lost, for example—but in August when Boeing’s Starliner space capsule scheduled to pick them up had to return to the Earth empty for malfunctions and safety concerns, there must have been a small measure of concern.
NASA’s Crew 8 Mission consisting of Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, Jeanette Epps, and Roscosmos’ Alexander Grebenkin, arrived via SpaceX’s Dragon capsule back in March.
Barratt is the only one of the team to have entered space previously, and all four were deemed “fashionably late” by Danish space station commander Andreas Mogensen, after a small crack in the capsule’s hatch prompted a late flurry of diagnostics reports and associated delays.
The ISS was at over-capacity for inhabitants during the two months when the Starliner mission failed, and Barratt told the AP that the ground crews and support staff of NASA had to “to replan, retool and kind of redo everything right along with us … and helped us to roll with all those punches.”
They’ve now parachuted back down into the Gulf of Mexico after a SpaceX capsule retrieved them last week. One, unnamed astronaut was taken to the hospital to be treated for an undisclosed injury, the other three are recuperating at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
It can take several weeks for the body to adjust to Earth’s gravity after a prolonged stay in microgravity.
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They conducted new scientific research including stem cell research to develop organoid models for studying degenerative diseases, exploring how fuel temperature affects material flammability, and studying how spaceflight affects immune function in astronauts. Their work aims to improve astronaut health during long-duration spaceflights, contributing to critical advancements in space medicine and benefitting humanity.
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The crew of four were replaced by two pairs of ISS visitors: the two astronauts sent up in the capsule that eventually brought the stranded astronauts back home, and two Starliner test pilots.
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