SpaceX returns 4 astronauts to Earth; rare night splashdown
It was an express trip home, lasting just 6 1/2 hours.
The astronauts, three American and one Japanese, flew back in the same capsule named Resilience in which they launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in November.
Their 167-day mission is the longest for astronauts launching from the US The previous record of 84 days was set by NASA's final Skylab station crew in 1974.
Saturday night's undocking left seven people at the space station, four of whom arrived a week ago via SpaceX.
Earthbound! NASA astronaut Victor Glover tweeted after departing the station.
One step closer to family and home!
Glover along with NASA's Mike Hopkins and Shannon Walker and Japan's Soichi Noguchi should have returned to Earth last Wednesday, but high offshore winds forced SpaceX to pass up a pair of daytime landing attempts.
Managers switched to a rare splashdown in darkness, to take advantage of calm weather.
SpaceX had practiced for a night time return, just in case, and even recovered its most recent station cargo capsule from the Gulf of Mexico in darkness. Infrared cameras tracked the capsule as it re-entered the atmosphere; it resembled a bright star streaking through the night sky.
All four main parachutes could be seen deploying just before splashdown, which was also visible in the infrared.
Apollo 8 NASA's first flight to the moon with astronauts ended with a predawn splashdown in the Pacific near Hawaii on Dec. 27, 1968. Eight years later, a Soviet capsule with two cosmonauts ended up in a dark, partially frozen lake in Kazakhstan, blown off course in a blizzard.
That was it for night time crew splashdowns until Sunday.
Despite the early hour, the Coast Guard was out in full force to enforce an 11-mile (18-kilometer) keep-out zone around the bobbing Dragon capsule. For SpaceX's first crew return in August, pleasure boaters swarmed the capsule, a safety risk.
Once aboard the SpaceX recovery ship, the astronauts planned to hop on a helicopter for the short flight to shore, then catch a plane straight to Houston for a reunion with their families.
Their capsule, Resilience, will head back to Cape Canaveral for refurbishment for SpaceX's first private crew mission in September. The space station docking mechanism will be removed, and a brand new domed window put in its place.
A tech billionaire has purchased the entire three-day flight, which will orbit 75 miles (120 kilometers) above the space station. He'll fly with a pair of contest winners and a physician assistant from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, his designated charity for the mission.
SpaceX's next astronaut launch for NASA will follow in October.
NASA turned to private companies to service the space station, after the shuttle fleet retired in 2011. SpaceX began supply runs in 2012 and, last May, launched its first crew, ending NASA's reliance on Russia for astronaut transport.
Boeing isn't expected to launch astronauts until early next year.
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HC to hear NIA's plea for death penalty for Yasin Malik on April 22
New Delhi (PTI): The Delhi High Court on Wednesday granted four weeks to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to respond to a reply filed by separatist leader Yasin Malik to its appeal seeking death penalty for him in a terror funding case, and listed the matter for hearing on April 22.
As Malik, who was virtually appearing from Tihar jail where he is serving life sentence in the case, accused the agency of "wasting time" and causing him "trauma" by "taking dates" in the appeal filed in 2023, a bench of Justices Navin Chawla and Ravinder Dudeja said there was no urgency in the case.
"There is no urgency. This is for enhancement of sentence. You are already on life sentence," the bench remarked.
The court gave four weeks as "last opportunity" to the NIA to file its rejoinder.
NIA counsel submitted that Mailk filed a lengthy reply to the agency's appeal, which even had content "not related" to the case, and the rejoinder was being vetted.
He also objected to Malik's claim of NIA seeking repeated adjournments, and said Malik himself took one year to file his reply to the appeal.
He further informed the court that the agency was seeking an in-camera hearing in the matter.
A trial court in Delhi awarded Malik -- chief of the banned Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF)-- life sentence on May 24, 2022, after holding him guilty of various offences under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
The NIA filed an appeal in 2023 in the high court seeking enhancement of his life term to the maximum punishment of death penalty.
In its plea before the high court for enhancement of sentence to death penalty, the NIA said if such "dreaded terrorists" are not given capital punishment on account of pleading guilty, there would be complete erosion of the sentencing policy and the terrorists would have a way out to avoid capital punishment.
A life sentence, the NIA asserted, is not commensurate with the crime committed by terrorists when the nation and families of soldiers have suffered loss of lives and the trial court's conclusion that Malik's crimes did not fall within the category of the "rarest of the rare cases" for grant of death penalty is "ex-facie legally flawed and completely unsustainable".
In his reply filed to the NIA's appeal, Mailk said that he spent nearly three decades as a key figure in a state-sanctioned "backchannel" mechanism, working with a succession of prime ministers, intelligence chiefs, and even business tycoons to foster peace in Jammu and Kashmir.
In an 85-page affidavit submitted before the Delhi High Court, Malik shared details about his journey from his school days to links with terrorists and meetings with political leaders.
He claimed the state was attempting to "erase" the history of engagement.
Malik said "being a scapegoat in politics isn't a new thing, it's a kind of a new normal but being a sacrificial goat is something which goes beyond the shard of high handedness of morality, if at all politics had one".
