Watch Andreas return to Earth

After undocking from Concord’s zenith-facing port of the Worldwide House Station, Crew-7 will carry out a sequence of burns to first distance the Crew Dragon from the House Station after which re-enter Earth’s environment. The Dragon’s warmth defend supplies the safety from the recent plasma shaped in entrance of the capsule whereas coming down via the environment. The spacecraft faces excessive warmth throughout re-entry – as a lot as 1600 °C.

Andreas and the crew are deliberate to splash down off the coast of Florida on 12 March 2024 at 09:35 GMT/10:35 CET, the place they are going to be picked up by a SpaceX restoration group and return to strong floor for the primary time in six months.

Pilot and commander

Andreas Mogensen was launched into orbit on 26 August 2023 for his first long-duration mission, along with NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, JAXA astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov on the Dragon Endurance spacecraft. Andreas was the primary non-US astronaut to function a pilot on the Dragon, a job Andreas was grateful to be assigned to. “It’s an honour to be the pilot of Crew Dragon, with our worldwide companions displaying their belief in ESA and my work,” he mentioned.  

After a month onboard, Andreas turned the commander of the Worldwide House Station, taking on from Sergei Prokopyev. On 1 February 2024, he turned the longest-serving European commander, surpassing Luca Parmitano’s document from 2020. He handed on the obligations to Oleg Kononenko on 10 March 2024, earlier than leaving for return to Earth.

Science all the way in which

Throughout his six-month mission to the Worldwide House Station, Andreas performed greater than 30 Europeans experiments.  He lately put in the primary metallic 3D printer within the Columbus module to check how 3D printing in metallic will carry out in microgravity, main the way in which for printing instrument and spare components in house sooner or later.

Andreas additionally frolicked within the Cupola, the House Station’s window to the world, taking footage of the brand new Moon within the Earthshine experiment, serving to scientists perceive extra about Earth’s local weather, and likewise trying down at Earth for thunder clouds and uncommon lightning phenomena with the Thor Davis experiment.

Go to from a fellow Scandinavian

An necessary time throughout the Huginn mission was when the Axiom Mission3 crew got here to the House Station, with ESA venture astronaut and fellow Scandinavian Marcus Wandt on his Muninn mission.

The 2 mission names, Huginn and Muninn, originate from the ravens of the god Odin in Norse mythology. The parable says that the ravens flew out to collect info for Odin and got here again each night to inform all about what had occurred on this planet. Impressed by this story, Andreas felt the title fitted his mission, going above Earth and telling us all about what he had seen.

Tune in to see the undocking of Andreas and Crew-7 on the 11 March 2024 at 13:15 GMT/14:15 CET and the splash down on 12 March 2024 at 09:35 GMT/10:35 CET on ESA WebTV.

Instances are topic to alter.