CBS News
Private-sector astronauts return to Earth after extended space station visit
A commercially chartered Crew Dragon spacecraft plunged into the atmosphere and splashed down off the east coast of Florida Friday, bringing four private astronauts back to Earth after an extended stay aboard the International Space Station.
With commander Michael López-Alegría and Italian co-pilot Walter Villadei monitoring cockpit displays, flanked by Swedish flier Marcus Wandt and Turkey’s Alper Gezeravci, the Crew Dragon’s braking rockets fired at 7:42 a.m. EST, slowing the ship just enough to drop the far side of its orbit deep into the atmosphere.
SpaceX web stream
Descending along a southwest-to-northeast trajectory across Central America and the Florida peninsula, the Crew Dragon’s heat shield protected the craft from temperatures higher than 3,000 degrees as the capsule rapidly decelerated in a blaze of atmospheric friction.
Approaching the landing zone east of Daytona Beach, two small drogue chutes deployed to stabilize the spacecraft, followed by the ship’s four main parachutes, which lowered the Crew Dragon to a gentle splashdown at 8:30 a.m. Mission duration was 21 days and 15 hours.
“Welcome home,” a flight controller radioed. “Thanks for flying SpaceX.”
“It was our pleasure,” López-Alegría replied. Despite the capsule’s motion on a gently rolling sea, he reported all four crew members were feeling good as they began their readjustment to gravity after three weeks off planet.
A SpaceX recovery ship was standing by and within about a half hour, the capsule was hauled aboard so technicians could open its side hatch and help the returning space fliers get out, one at a time, for initial medical checks.
SpaceX web stream
All four were in good spirits, able to stand upright with the assistance of recovery personnel as they began getting used to the unfamiliar tug of gravity.
It was the third — and longest — “private astronaut mission” chartered by Houston-based Axiom Space in a program sanctioned by NASA to encourage private-sector use of the International Space Station.
Axiom is using the Crew Dragon flights to ISS to develop procedures and experience needed to operate a commercial space station the company plans to start building over the next few years.
Launched Jan. 18 from the Kennedy Space Center, López-Alegría, a retired NASA astronaut, Villadei, Wandt and Gezeravci originally planned to spend just two weeks aboard the station, returning to Earth on Feb. 3.
But high winds in both the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean splashdown zones forced the crew to remain in orbit an additional six days when all was said and done, undocking Wednesday and then flying on their own for nearly two days to reach the proper trajectory for Friday’s re-entry.
SpaceX web stream
The descent to splashdown appeared to go off without a hitch, clearing the way for NASA and SpaceX to press ahead with two major missions amid a steady string of Starlink launches.
On Feb. 14, SpaceX plans to launch a robotic moon lander built by Intuitive Machines of Houston in a project funded by NASA to collect data on conditions near the lunar south pole as the agency ramps up toward astronaut landings in the next few years.
Once that mission is is off the ground, SpaceX will shift gears and ready another Falcon 9 for launch at the end of the month from the same Kennedy Space Center pad to carry four long-duration crew members to the International Space Station.
Crew 8 commander Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, Jeanette Epps and cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin will join Crew 7 commander Jasmin Moghbeli, European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen, Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa and cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov aboard the ISS, along with Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub and NASA’s Loral O’Hara.
Crew 7 was launched last August follow by Kononenko, Chub and O’Hara last September.
Moghbeli and her crewmates plan to undock and head home in early March. The ISS crew then will await the late March arrival of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying veteran cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, Belarus guest flier Marina Vasilevskaya and NASA veteran Tracy Dyson.
Novitskiy, Vasilevskaya and O’Hara will return to Earth on April 2, leaving Dyson behind on the ISS with Kononenko and Chub, who are both spending a full year in space. Dyson will join them for return to Earth in September.
Hollywood actor Keanu Reeves made his professional auto racing debut on Saturday at the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
“The Matrix” star, who qualified 31st out of 35 cars, ran as high as 21st before a single-car crash a little more than halfway through the 45-minute race briefly stopped him in his tracks.
Darron Cummings / AP
The 60-year-old spun into the grass without a collision on the exit of Turn 9 when he had about 21 minutes of racing left. He re-entered the course and continued driving, signaling he was uninjured.
Reeves finished 25th.
The actor is competing at Indianapolis in the Toyota GR Cup, a Toyota spec-racing series and a support series for this weekend’s Indy 8 Hour sports car event. He has a second race on Sunday.
Darron Cummings / AP
He is driving the No. 92 BRZRKR car, which is promoting his graphic novel “The Book of Elsewhere.” He is teammates with Cody Jones from “Dude Perfect.”
Reeves has previous racing experience as a former participant in the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach in the celebrity race. Reeves won the event in 2009.
A passenger successfully landed a small plane on Friday after the pilot had a medical emergency, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
The twin-engine Beechcraft King Air 90 was traveling from Henderson Executive Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada to Monterey Regional Airport in California, with a pilot and one other person on board, the FAA said.
The pilot suffered an unspecified medical emergency while flying, the FAA said, forcing the passenger to take the controls and make an emergency landing at Meadows Field Airport in Bakersfield, California.
The Kern Fire Department told CBS News affiliate KBAX that firefighters were called to a report of a medical emergency on the plane. The pilot was reported to be “incapacitated,” the fire department said. Firefighters saw the plane approach and land safely, then “chased” the plane down the runway in emergency vehicles to meet it.
The FAA did not release the passenger or pilot’s identities nor give an update on the pilot’s condition. The pilot was taken to an area hospital by ambulance. The passenger did not report any injuries.
The FAA and the National Transportation Security Board will investigate the incident, the FAA said.
Congolese authorities began vaccination against mpox on Saturday, nearly two months after the disease outbreak that spread from Congo to several African countries and beyond was declared a global emergency by the World Health Organization.
The 265,000 doses donated to Congo by the European Union and the U.S. were rolled out in the eastern city of Goma in North Kivu province, where hospitals and health workers have been overstretched, struggling to contain the new and possibly more infectious strain of mpox.
Congo, with about 30,000 suspected mpox cases and 859 deaths, accounts for more than 80% of all the cases and 99% of all the deaths reported in Africa this year. All of the Central African nation’s 26 provinces have recorded mpox cases. Officials in Congo previously told CBS News that they’ve struggled to diagnose patients and provide basic care in the vast country of 100 million people, where a fragile, under-resourced healthcare system is also burdened by the stigma associated with the virus.
Although most mpox infections and deaths recorded in Congo are in children under age 15, the doses being administered are only meant for adults and will be given to at-risk populations and front-line workers, Health Minister Roger Kamba said this week.
“Strategies have been put in place by the services in order to vaccinate all targeted personnel,” Muboyayi ChikayaI, the minister’s chief of staff, said as he kicked off the vaccination.
Moses Sawasawa / AP
At least 3 million doses of the vaccine approved for use in children are expected from Japan in the coming days, Kamba said.
Mpox, also known as monkeypox, had been spreading mostly undetected for years in Africa before the disease prompted the 2022 global outbreak that saw wealthy countries quickly respond with vaccines from their stockpiles while Africa received only a few doses despite pleas from its governments.
However, unlike the global outbreak in 2022 that was overwhelmingly focused on gay and bisexual men, mpox in Africa is now being spread via sexual transmission as well as through close contact among children, pregnant women and other vulnerable groups, Dr. Dimie Ogoina, the chair of WHO’s mpox emergency committee, recently told reporters.
More than 34,000 suspected cases and 866 deaths from the virus have been recorded across 16 countries in Africa this year. That is a 200% increase compared to the same period last year, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
A lack of diagnostic materials and basic medicines to treat the virus, which can improve survival rates, have also hampered efforts to contain the outbreak, and access to vaccines remains a challenge.
Moses Sawasawa / AP
The continent of 1.4 billion people has only secured a commitment for 5.9 million doses of mpox vaccines, expected to be available from October through December, Dr. Jean Kaseya, head of the Africa CDC, told reporters last week. Congo remains a priority, he said.
At the vaccination drive in Goma, Dr Jean Bruno Kibunda, the WHO representative, warned that North Kivu province is at a risk of a major outbreak due to the “promiscuity observed in the camps” for displaced people, as one of the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis caused by armed violence unfolds there.
The news of the vaccination program brought relief to many in Congo, especially in hospitals that had been struggling to manage the outbreak. Doctors with several charities working in the country have told CBS News they’re overstretched and short on supplies, even having to use tents and mattresses on the floor of makeshift isolation wards to treat a constant influx of patients.
“If everyone could be vaccinated, it would be even better to stop the spread of the disease,” said Dr. Musole Mulambamunva Robert, the medical director of Kavumu Hospital, one of the mpox treatment centers in eastern Congo.
Eastern Congo has been beset by conflict for years, with more than 100 armed groups vying for a foothold in the mineral-rich area near the border with Rwanda. Some have been accused of carrying out mass killings.
