Sept. 4 (UPI) — The SpaceX Crew-6 Dragon Spacecraft with four astronauts aboard splashed down early Monday, nearly 20 hours hours after it undocked from the International Space Station to being its return journey to Earth.
The self-driving Dragon spacecraft Endeavor splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida near Jacksonville at 12:17 a.m. EDT, ending the astronauts’ six-month science mission on the orbital laboratory.
“After a 17-hour return journey from space, Crew 6 is home,” Kate Tice, senior quality systems engineering manager at SpaceX, said during the live broadcast as the capsule could be seen landing in the ocean where it began to bob up and down as fast boats raced to its location.
The splashdown officially brings an end to the 186-day mission in space for United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev and NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, who departed Earth for the International Space Station in early March.
The capsule was retrieved from the ocean and placed upon SpaceX’s Megan recovery vessel, which had been awaiting the astronauts’ return about 3 nautical miles away. Less than an hour following splashdown, Bowen was the first exit the capsule followed by Hoburg, Fedyaev and Alneyadi.
The crew were to undergo medical evaluation.
“Welcome home, #Crew6!” NASA tweeted following splashdown.
“After six months of science and discovery aboard the @Space_Station, our Crew-6 team splashed down at 12:17am ET (0417 UTC) and will be picked up shortly by recovery teams.”
The splashdown, which was the Endeavor capsule’s fourth, came 17 hours after the spacecraft undocked from the forward-facing port of the International Space Station’s Harmony module at 7:05 a.m. EDT Sunday.
The departure was initially scheduled for Saturday but was delayed due to the aftermath of Idalia, which hit Florida last week as a Category 4 Hurricane and left a path of destruction in its wake.
The Crew-6 astronauts departed for the International Space Station early March when they relieved Crew-5 of its duties and began their own six-month science endeavor.
Crew-6 was relieved of its duties by Crew-7, which had arrived at the space station for its six-month stay on Aug. 27.
