Crew Endeavour is returning home

Grado de dificultad: 3 (Por el idioma)

Columnista: Roberto

This post shall be in English, to pay our tribute to a perfect mission (so far).

Note: actually, their success has nothing to do with luck.

They are on their way home!

Today, august 1^st, the Endeavour capsule is now on its way back to earth. It will take until tomorrow to reach the Atlantic ocean, off the coast of Pensacola, Florida.

Interesting fact: the last splashdown took place 40 years ago (Soyuz and Shuttles used to land on solid ground).

We couldn’t miss the penultimate step of this strategic mission.

Did you notice that the depressurization phase takes far more time than in the movies? It lasted around 3 hours in total.

One of the reasons is because they constantly check the ambient temperature in the capsule.

During the depressurization phase, it tends to drop. This is a normal reaction they need to monitor, since a leak could occur at any moment.

This is also an interesting lesson we are learning about the way they close the hatches: they perform a cleaning of each seals.

Endeavour ends its “demo” role

This travel back will be the only “demo” part of the mission. AKA the same team that came up is the same that will return in the same travel.

Note: it took 62 days, though

The returning crew could have been different. However, this ship is still considered in its test phase, impeding any other astronauts to take the risk.

In the next missions the capsule will comply its real purpose: an almost completely autonomous transport ship.

The last step will be the splashdown, tomorrow (august 2^nd). Crew Dragon “Endeavour” already performed this part in an autonomous way, during a crewless test mission.

But since this is the final real test for the SpaceX personal transport solution, everyone will be pending (and anxious).

TMN will, of course, be watching again and reporting it to you.

One last comment: please note how the SpaceX controllers were all wearing masks:

Que nuestros lectores habituales se tranquilicen: el próximo artículo será en español.

Crew Endeavour is returning home