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Astronauts from NASA's SpaceX Crew-5 mission shared their experiences of spending more than five months in space before they returned to Earth earlier this month. SpaceX's Crew Dragon took to the skies in October last year and came back during the second week of March. On board were two NASA astronauts, Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, alongside the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Koichi Wakata and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina. Out of the four, only astronaut Wakata had flown to space before, with the remainder experiencing space flight for the first time and describing their journey during a press conference within days after their return.

NASA & Roscosmos Crew Surprised How Accurately Their Crew Dragon Simulations Matched Reality

As part of her opening remarks, cosmonaut Kirkina shared her surprise at how accurately the Russian segment of the International Space Station matched with the simulators on the ground. Her comments, as translated by a translator, shared that:

The first thing that really impressed and surprised me when I got on to the ISS right when I flew through the vestibule is that it's really real, it exists! Here it is. And the second thing is when we got to the Russian segment and I saw everything, I realized that it matches perfectly all of our mockups and all of our simulators and it was really comforting and reassuring because it was like I was seeing something that I had already knew, something that was familiar.

Cosmonaut Kirkina's experiences with the simulator were shared by NASA's Cassada, who was surprised at how precisely the sounds inside the Crew Dragon could match those in a ride that simulates reentry on Earth. He also described a strange experience during reentry that, in his words, was akin to a 'glitch in the matrix.'

The astronaut shared:

For me, you know Nicole's right, the Gs are a little surprising even if you're ready for them. But, I took it upon myself to kind of keep everybody aware what the Gs were as we were all doing our own different tasks by just of let them know where we are and where we're headed. And I remember calling out you know four and a half Gs or so, and for me, it was really strange. My inner started doing it's thing that it hadn't done in almost a hockey season. And so I noticed that I had to like lock into the frame of the display, and my eyes kind of did this, it was like the Matrix, it was like a glitch in the Matrix, where I would tumble maybe five degrees and then instantaneously end back up and then tumble five degrees and then kept doing this every two to three seconds.

JAXA astronaut Koichi Wakata (bottom left) smiles after exiting the SpaceX Crew Dragon after splashdown in March 2023. Image: SpaceX

And then that lasted until we were back down to two and a half or so. So thank goodness it wasn't permanent. But, I agree that you know it felt to me, it felt very similar to what you would experience in a ride trying to simulate reentry. The sounds of the vehicles, I thought well that clearly someone is playing an audio loop right. This isn't actually what it sounds like! But it does, it sounds just like doing a ride at big amusement park.

NASA astronaut Mann, also on her first spaceflight, mirrored experiences shared by previous astronauts about what it feels like traveling on the SpaceX Crew Dragon as it returns to Earth. NASA astronaut Victor Glover had shared similar thoughts mid-last year, and Mann described her experiences by outlining:

We're at what, four days right now? Do we share the secret with them? Gravity is not cool! After being in zero G you come back to gravity and you're thinking, this is going to be great and it's not great. It takes you a while to adapt. You know we have trainers that help us, with the strength and the balance. But think we're four days into it, we're still a little bit wobbly. But I think to your first question, coming downhill, really the landing wasn't that significant. But feeling G for the first time. So when we start reentry, we have a G meter we could see the G rise. And we all commented, okay, well, here we are, we're at half a G, it's starting to rise.

And like, half a G, holy smokes, it felt like somebody was sitting on your chest and pushing you down and you're only at half a G. So by the time we were at 4.5 Gs we really were getting smooshed into that seat, we were really focusing on just breathing. You can feel your tongue in the back of your throat and it's just amazing because it's so powerful and so strong. Even though you know that's going to be the profile, it's still amazing. And then the drogues coming out, and the chutes coming out. These were pretty dynamic events and you're really swaying around. So by the time you get to splashdown, it's just poof, you know you splashdown.

The Crew-5 crew was followed by the Crew-6 mission, who joined them a couple of days before they departed from the space station. Crew-6 is currently slated to complete a full-duration mission on the ISS and make its way back to Earth later this year.