Crew Dragon re-entry seen from space station

The Crew Dragon capsule Resilience leaves a fiery trail above Mexico as it hurtles through Earth’s atmosphere, returning four astronauts, members of the Crew-1 mission, to Earth after more than five months in space. The picture was taken by the European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Thomas Pesquet from aboard the International Space Station on May 2, shortly before the capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico.

“Crazy to think that six hours after we closed the hatch on our friends, we saw them in that shooting star streaking through the night sky,” Pesquet wrote on Twitter where he posted the image. “This is a sight I’ll remember all my life.”

Pesquet arrived at the orbital outpost on board of SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour on April 24. Together with his Crew-2 colleagues, NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, and Japan’s Akihiko Hoshide, he will stay at the station until late October this year. Crew-2 shares the space station with members of the Soyuz MS-18 mission, Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov, and NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei, who arrived on April 9. — Tereza Pultarova