The astronauts of NASA's SpaceX Crew-3 are preparing to return home

NASA's SpaceX Crew-3 members are reaching the end of their mission and are ready to return home after months of living and working in space.

On Nov. 10, NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, and Kayla Barron, as well as European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Matthias Maurer, launched with SpaceX Crew-3.  Now, their mission aboard the International Space Station is approaching an end, and they are getting ready to return to Earth. The crew stated during a press conference on Friday (April 15) that they have had an incredible adventure but are looking forward to returning home.

Since their launch on Nov. 10, 2021, the Crew-3 astronauts have been living and working on the station. Hundreds of experiments and technology demos were carried out by the crew members during their journey. They worked on a variety of plant growth experiments, testing new systems for growing crops and studying potentially drought-resistant cotton plants. They also put a handheld bioprinter and a small scanning electron microscope to a test. The handheld bioprinter was designed to print bandages produced from skin cells directly onto a wound. A new gadget was placed to facilitate studies on fire safety in microgravity, and one of the first archaeology experiments in space was done. The astronauts also executed four spacewalks in pairs, constructing and installing modification kits and successfully replacing a defective antenna on the Port-1 truss structure in preparation for upcoming solar array upgrades.

"It's been a huge honor to be living and working aboard the International Space Station," said Marshburn, the crew's only veteran astronaut.

NASA's Commercial Crew Program's SpaceX Crew-3 mission is the agency's third crew rotation mission. NASA is able to continue important research and technological investigations onboard the station because of regular, long-duration commercial crew rotation missions. Such research benefits people on Earth 카지노사이트존 and paves the way for future exploration of the Moon and Mars, beginning with the agency's Artemis missions, which include the first landing of a woman and a person of color on the lunar surface.