Ground personnel carry International Space Station (ISS) crew member Jessica Meir of NASA after the landing of the Soyuz MS-15 space capsuleAdd |
NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Andrew Morgan. and Russian
cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka touched down as scheduled Friday morning. Their Soyuz
capsule landed under a striped orange-and-white parachute about 150 kilometers
(93 miles) southeast of Dzhezkazgan in central Kazakhstan.
Russian officials said they took stringent measures to protect
the crew members amid the pandemic. The recovery team and medical personnel
assigned to help the three out of the capsule and to perform post-flight checks
were under close medical observation for nearly a month before the landing and
tested for the coronavirus.
Morgan wrapped up a 272-day mission on his first flight into
space. He conducted seven space walks, four of which were to improve and extend
the life of the station’s Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which looks for evidence
of dark matter in the universe.
Meir and Skripochka spent 205 days in space, with Meir carrying
out the first three all-women spacewalks with crewmate Christina Koch, who
returned from space in February.
The crew members smiled as they talked to medical experts
wearing masks. Following a quick checkup, they will be flown by helicopter to
Baikonur, from where Skripochka will be taken to Moscow, said Vyacheslav
Rogozhnikov, a Russian medical official who oversaw the crew’s return.
Morgan and Meir will have to be driven from Baikonur to
Kyzylorda, 300 kilometers (190 miles) away, to board a NASA flight to Houston.
Restrictions on international flights imposed by Kazakhstan required the long
drive, Rogozhnikov said.
“A 300-kilometer ride after landing is quite a load on the
astronauts,” he said, adding that Russia deployed its doctors to help the
astronauts, if needed.
Skripochka will spend three weeks under observation at a medical
facility at the Star City cosmonaut training center outside Moscow, Russian
space corporation Roscosmos said. Star City officials said the medical
personnel monitoring him will wear hazmat suits to protect him from becoming
infected with the new virus.
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