Crew-6 leaves ISS for Earth, to splash down near hurricane-hit Florida

Four astronauts are en route to return from the International Space Station (ISS) after concluding their six-month stay. They are headed for a splashdown off the coast of Florida. The splashdown is taking place just days after Hurricane Idalia ravaged some parts of the state.

The astronauts are members of the Crew-6 mission. It was run jointly by NASA and SpaceX. The astronauts boarded the Crew Dragon capsule on Sunday (September 3). The capsule departed the space station at 7:05 ET. It is expected that the space capsule will take one day to manoeuvre around Earth and then head to the landing site. The splashdown is scheduled to take place at 12:17 am ET on September 4.

NASA has been keeping an eye on the impact of Hurricane Idalia. The hurricane made landfall on Wednesday morning on Florida's Gulf Coast. It caused damage in Florida before it tore through southern Georgia and the Carolinas.

Those aboard the Crew Dragon capsule are -NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen & Warren "Woody" Hoburg, along with UAE astronaut Sultan Alneyadi and Russian Cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.

The group of astronauts spent six months on board the ISS.The Crew-6 astronauts handed over operations to Crew-7 astronauts who arrived at ISS on Sunday.

“We got a lot done during our mission,” Hoburg said during a remote news conference on August 23. “We had two visiting SpaceX cargo vehicles — the CRS-27 and 28 missions with lots of science on board. And we, as a crew, conducted a total of three spacewalks.”

“It’s been a big adventure and a lot of fun,”

Hoburg was quoted by CNN.

Crew-6 hailed Frank Rubio, the NASA astronaut who is on his way to breaking the record for the longest time a US astronaut has spent in microgravity. He has spent nearly 350 days at the ISS. The current record of 355 days is held by NASA's Mark Vande Hei.

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