Four astronauts have landed back on Earth after a five-month mission to the International Space Station, where they replaced the delayed Boeing Starliner test pilots.
Their SpaceX capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California, a day after departing the orbital lab.
“Welcome home,” SpaceX Mission Control communicated.
The returning astronauts were: Nasa’s Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan’s Takuya Onishi, and Russia’s Kirill Peskov.
They were launched in March to take over from the two Nasa astronauts whose mission was impacted by Starliner’s failed demonstration flight.
Malfunctions with the Starliner kept Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams at the space station for over nine months, far exceeding the planned week-long mission.
Nasa decided to send Boeing’s new crew capsule back empty and reassigned Wilmore and Williams to SpaceX.
Wilmore and Williams departed shortly after McClain and her crew arrived to take their place.
Butch Wilmore has since retired from Nasa.
Before leaving the space station on Friday, Anne McClain spoke about the “tumultuous times on Earth” and the struggles people face.
“We want this mission, our mission, to be a reminder of what people can do when we work together, when we explore together,” she stated.
McClain said she was looking forward to “doing nothing for a couple of days” once back in Houston, US.
High on the crew’s list of desires were hot showers and juicy burgers.
This marks SpaceX’s third splashdown in the Pacific with astronauts on board, but the first for a Nasa crew in the past 50 years.
Elon Musk’s company transitioned capsule returns from Florida to the California coast earlier this year to minimize the risk of debris landing in populated areas.
Two back-to-back private astronaut crews were the first to experience Pacific Ocean recoveries.
The last time Nasa astronauts returned to the Pacific from space was during the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission, a symbolic joining of American and Soviet forces in orbit.
