JOPLIN, Mo. — Four State residents got to witness a rare spectacle in the sky early Tuesday morning (3/12).
Around 4:45 a.m., four astronauts on board the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule safely splashed down off the coast of Florida, in the Gulf of Mexico.
But just minutes before — the crewed spacecraft reentered Earth’s atmosphere over the Four State area.
One of our photographers captured the vehicle’s reentry over west Joplin.
Re-Entry Timeline For SpaceX Dragon Crew Capsule
At 4:38 a.m., those in the Joplin area could clearly see the 3,000° fireball of super-heated plasma that encapsulated the SpaceX Crew-7 Dragon capsule, as the vehicle blazed a trail across the Midwest — slowing from 17,000 miles per hour (mph), to a steady 350 mph — all in a matter of minutes.
The four-person crew returned from their 197-day stay on board the International Space Station (ISS).
They departed the ISS at 10:20 a.m. Monday (3/11) to begin more than an 18-hour ride home.
Plasma build-up on reentry led to about an 11-minute blackout period, during which Mission Control could not communicate with the crew.
NASA thermal cameras captured the parachutes deploy, slowing the capsule to 16 mph before splashdown.
The vehicle’s path of reentry brought it across the central United States — a rarity for a Dragon return that often re-enters from the south, across the Gulf of Mexico.
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