Dragon Spacecraft Carrying Roscosmos Cosmonaut Splashes Down Off Florida Coast

UNITED NATIONS (Sputnik) - The SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying the Crew-5 mission team, including Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina, has successfully splashed down off Florida’s Space Coast, according to a live stream from the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

During the flight, each of the team members had the opportunity to watch the journey on their own screen. The entire flight was autonomous and the crew simply monitored the process and made sure that everything was going smoothly.

The Crew-5 spent 157 days in space. During the flight back to Earth, the Dragon spacecraft experienced a temperature of over 3000 degrees Farenheit on the outside.

Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) in October 2022 as part of the multinational Crew-5 mission team, which also includes NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata. Kikina became the first Russian cosmonaut to board the US Crew Dragon spacecraft as part of the ISS integrated flights agreement signed by Russian space agency Roscosmos and NASA in July 2022.

The first integrated flight under the agreement took place on September 21, 2022 and brought Russian cosmonauts Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin, as well as NASA astronaut Francisco Rubio, to the ISS aboard a Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft.