NASA claims that it was perfectly fine.
Slow to deploy
The Crew-2 astronauts flew to the International Space Station in a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. After a long and exhausting 199 days, which included several toilet problems, an olympics in space, and two spin-outs of the International Space Station, they finally returned to Earth without any issues.
One of the Crew Dragon capsule's parachutes failed to deploy within a few seconds during the descent home. This added a little drama to an already stressful mission. Ars Technica reported that the inflation rate of parachutes was within normal limits, and the capsule had a nominal descent speed.
According to Ars, NASA's human spaceflight chief Kathy Lueders stated that her team would be looking at the chute loading and understanding the behavior. She also noted that slow deployments had been observed several times during testing. "The thing that makes it feel a bit more confident is the fact that both the loading and deceleration of spacecraft looked minimal."
Mission Mostly Smooth
Endeavour, the capsule, returned home with a successful mission. It splashed down in Gulf of Mexico, just off Pensacola, Florida, on Monday night. This marked SpaceX's fourth safe return to Earth of its Crew Dragon capsule from space.
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NASA's Shane Kimbrough, Megan McArthur and Akihiko Hoshide from Japan's space agency JAXA were the returning astronauts. The European Space Agency's Thomas Pesquet was also present.
Crew-3 arrived at the ISS with the astronauts. However, due to weather conditions and a minor medical problem, the mission was postponed until Crew-2 had left. Pesquet, who was known for his incredible photographs from space and vibrant social media presence, once again used his meme skills to express his sadness about the situation.
We won't be able to cross paths with our #Crew3 colleagues at the Space Station. Pity, it would have been a pleasure to explain the finer points of living up here Quand tu bois ton cafe dans l'espace // Quand tu te souviens d'ou vient l'eau pic.twitter.com/iPvKbvs7cZ -- Thomas Pesquet (@Thom_astro) November 7, 2021
READ MORE: Crew Dragon safely lands despite one parachute filling slowly [Ars Technica]
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