After spending 199 days in space, the Crew-7 mission, which is a member of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, returned safely, accomplishing great feats for its multinational crew and participating in a number of scientific studies.

SpaceX Crew-7, which successfully landed in a Dragon spacecraft off the coast of Pensacola, Florida, on Tuesday, completing the agency’s seventh commercial crew rotation mission to the International Space Station. 199 days were spent in orbit by the four-member international crew.

At 5:47 a.m. EDT, NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, astronaut Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency, astronaut Satoshi Furukawa of JAXA, and cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov of Roscosmos splashed back down to Earth. The crew and spacecraft were recovered by teams working on SpaceX recovery vessels. The astronauts will take a plane to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston after landing back on Earth.

“After more than six months aboard the International Space Station, NASA’s SpaceX Crew-7 has safely returned home,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “This international crew showed that space unites us all. It’s clear that we can do more – we can learn more – when we work together. The science experiments conducted during their time in space will help prepare for NASA’s bold missions at the Moon, Mars, and beyond, all while benefitting humanity here on Earth.”

Mission Accomplishments and Trials

On August 26, 2023, at 3:27 a.m., a Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Crew-7 mission blasted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After almost thirty hours, Dragon anchored to the space-facing port of the Harmony module. On Monday, March 11, at 11:20 a.m., Crew-7 undocked to start the journey home.

During their expedition, Moghbeli, Mogensen, Furukawa, and Borisov covered 3,184 orbits around the Earth, 84,434,094 miles, and 197 days in the space station. Moghbeli and Borisov flew in orbit for the first time on the Crew-7 mission. Over the course of his two journeys, Mogensen has spent 209 days in space, whereas Furukawa has spent 366 days in space.

The members of Crew-7 participated in numerous science and maintenance projects as well as technological displays during their mission. Together with NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara, Moghbeli carried out a single spacewalk to replace one of the twelve trundle bearing assemblies on the port solar alpha rotary joint, which enables the arrays to track the Sun and provide energy for the station.

The crew worked on hundreds of experiments and technology demonstrations, such as the first investigation into how humans react to varying lengths of spaceflight and the space station’s food cultivation project.

Prospects for the Future and the Effect of the Program

This was the Dragon spacecraft’s third trip, with the name Endurance. Prior to this, it supported the Crew-3 and Crew-5 missions as well. The Dragon will be inspected, performance data will be analyzed, and the spacecraft will be prepared for its next journey at SpaceX’s refurbishment facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station when it returns to Florida.

NASA’s Commercial Crew Program includes the Crew-7 trip, which returns to Earth after NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 launch, which docked to the station on March 5 to start a new science mission.

Safe, dependable, and reasonably priced transportation to and from low Earth orbit and the International Space Station is the aim of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. This is already giving researchers more time to explore and has raised the possibility of discoveries on humanity’s microgravity testbed. It is also assisting NASA in getting ready for future manned missions to the Moon and Mars.