Andreas Mogensen was impressed by how smooth the landing was.
The first ESA astronaut (and the first non-American) to serve as a pilot on a US commercial spacecraft, Mogensen and his SpaceX Crew-7 crewmates returned to Earth after a 197-day stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS). On March 12th.
Speaking at his crew's first post-flight news conference at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston on Monday (March 25), Mogensen likened their fall to “falling into the water” in a swimming pool while wearing a life jacket.
“What I noticed in particular was the smoothness of the landing compared to my first flight,” Mogensen said, referring to his 2015 landing on the Kazakh steppes aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. “the [SpaceX] The dragon lands in the water, and I think that makes a big difference.”
“It was actually kind of a very soft splash,” Mogensen said.
Related: SpaceX's Crew-7 capsule returns 4 astronauts to Earth with pre-dawn landing (video)
NASA astronaut Yasmine Moghbeli, who led Crew 7, agreed that the landing was smooth, but then found that what came next was much rougher than others had noticed.
Describing the conclusion of her first spaceflight, she said: “It felt like we were rocking from side to side, but then everyone I spoke to said, ‘Oh, the water was glassy when I landed, and there was almost no wind.’” “So it definitely felt a lot more moving than it was.”
This movement did not end when they returned to solid ground. The crew — including Mogbele, Mogensen and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa (Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov, the fourth member of Crew-7, missed Monday's event, having already returned to Russia) — underwent physiological tests To see how they adapted to the reintroduction of gravity.
“Shortly after landing, we try to walk first with our eyes open, and then with our eyes closed,” Mogensen said. “We were all a little wobbly on our feet, but we were still able to walk more or less in a straight line as long as our eyes were open because it was our primary source of balance after spending six months in space.”
“Our eyes are closed, because we haven't used the sense of balance in our ears for six months, our brains have to re-input that sensor into its sensor suite, and that takes time. So with our eyes closed, it was almost impossible.” [to walk a straight line],” He said.
“I did this cute tap dance test with my eyes closed,” Moghbeli said with a laugh.
Related: The human body in space: 6 strange facts
Fortunately, they adapted in a quick manner, freeing them to start enjoying some aspects of life that they had missed so much while outside Earth.
“I missed a hot bath, especially in a hot spring, because the water doesn't fall or accumulate in zero gravity,” Furukawa said.
Likewise, Moghbeli said she misses hot showers, but at the same time wants to eat a wide variety of foods.
“You have a set menu there, and you can't eat what you want whenever you want,” she said. “So my first lunch [back on Earth] “It was a nice roast beef with some Cape Cod potato chips, and then my first dinner was a 16-ounce prime rib with French fries.”
During their time together on the space station, the Crew-7 astronauts witnessed the arrival of seven visiting vehicles and the departure of seven others; Contributed to hundreds of technology experiments and demonstrations; Moghbeli completed the first spacewalk of her career at NASA.
It was towards the end of this six-hour and 42-minute EVA that Moghbeli made international news when she let her tool bag float away and get lost in space. The incident, which was minor but challenging in itself, helped highlight another difficulty astronauts faced while in orbit.
“I found that one of the big challenges was trying to take a photo of a place [on Earth] That you want to photograph, and you're trying to kill some time, and you're trying to plan your day, and then you make your way to the dome or one of the other windows and you get ready, you get ready and then just a little bit cloudy. Even if it's not cloudy, it might be a little hazy or the air isn't “It's completely clear, and then you won't get a good picture.”
“So it's quite a challenge if you're trying to capture a specific target,” he said.
That's exactly what happened to Furukawa, but it wasn't the cloud or poor air quality that hampered his target, a mountaintop southwest of Tokyo.
“We were at Node 1, I think, having lunch or dinner, and Satoshi was out in the dome taking pictures. He came in and said: Well, you know, I'm very, very sorry. But you know, I took this picture. And we were all thinking: What It is happening?
“He managed to take a picture of the tool bag as he passed Mount Fuji,” Mogensen said with a laugh. “He was trying to take a picture of Mount Fuji and ended up with a picture of the tool bag.”
Overall, their six months in space were pretty good, Moghbeli said, but some days were better than others.
“If I give an honest answer, like anything else, if you spend six or six and a half months somewhere like we did, you will definitely have bad days,” Moghbeli said in response to a question from space. .com. “I loved being on the International Space Station, and I wouldn't trade it for the world. It was the most incredible thing I've ever done in my life, but there were definitely days where…I realized you're missing out on a lot of accomplishments and things here on Earth.”
Moreover, there were maintenance tasks that were less satisfactory than performing pioneering scientific and technological demonstrations. However, Moghbeli said, it's worth the trip.
“In the end, I absolutely loved it. I was very sad to leave the space station,” she said.
“Devoted student. Bacon advocate. Beer scholar. Troublemaker. Falls down a lot. Typical coffee enthusiast.”