On Saturday, four astronauts made their way back to Earth after a five-month mission aboard the International Space Station. Their journey was initially to relieve the Boeing Starliner’s test pilots.
Their SpaceX capsule parachuted into the Pacific off the Southern California coast a day after departing the orbiting lab.
“Welcome home,” SpaceX Mission Control radioed.
Returning were Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers from NASA, Takuya Onishi from Japan, and Kirill Peskov from Russia. They set off in March as successors to two NASA astronauts involved in a problematic Starliner mission.
Due to issues with Starliner, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams found themselves stationed at the space station for over nine months instead of just a week. NASA subsequently ordered the Starliner back without a crew and switched Wilmore and Williams to SpaceX. They departed shortly after McClain’s team arrived. Wilmore has since bid farewell to NASA.
Before leaving the space station on Friday, McClain made note of “some tumultuous times on Earth” with people struggling.
“We want this mission, our mission, to be a reminder of what people can do when we work together, when we explore together,” she said.
McClain was eagerly anticipating some downtime in Houston, saying she looked forward to “doing nothing for a few days.” Her fellow astronauts were particularly keen on having hot showers and enjoying juicy burgers.
This marked SpaceX’s third crewed splashdown in the Pacific, though it was the first in 50 years for a NASA team. Earlier this year, Elon Musk’s company began returning capsules to California instead of Florida to avoid the hazard of debris over populated areas. The previous two private missions were also recovered in the Pacific.
The 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project was the last instance NASA astronauts made a splashdown in the Pacific, marking a significant cooperative event in space diplomacy between the USA and the Soviet Union.
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