California: Four astronauts have returned safely to Earth after a five-month mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS), carried out to relieve stranded Boeing Starliner test pilots.
The crew, NASA’s Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan’s Takuya Onishi, and Russia’s Kirill Peskov have splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the Southern California coast, just a day after departing the orbiting laboratory.
Their SpaceX Dragon capsule marked the company’s third crewed Pacific splashdown, and the first NASA crew to land in the Pacific in 50 years. The last such return took place during the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission, a landmark Cold War-era docking between American and Soviet crews.
The astronauts launched in March as replacements for NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who were left stranded on the ISS following Starliner’s botched demonstration flight. Initially planned for just a week in orbit, Wilmore and Williams ended up spending more than nine months aboard the station. NASA later decided to bring Starliner back to Earth empty and reassigned the pair to a SpaceX mission. Wilmore has since retired from the agency.
Before departing the ISS, McClain reflected on current challenges on Earth, stating that, “We want this mission, our mission, to be a reminder of what people can do when we work together, when we explore together.” Upon returning to Houston, she said she was looking forward to doing nothing for a couple of days, while her crewmates had their sights set on hot showers and juicy burgers.
SpaceX shifted capsule recovery operations from Florida to California earlier this year to reduce risks from falling debris. Back-to-back private crews were the first to test Pacific splashdowns before this NASA mission.
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