Astronauts return to Earth with Pacific splashdown following 5-month ISS mission

Four crew members who flew to the International Space Station (ISS) earlier this year to relieve two astronauts who were left stranded by a beleaguered space capsule returned to Earth on Saturday. 

NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, along with Japan’s Takuya Onishi and Russia’s Kirill Peskov, splashed down in the Pacific off the coast of Southern California on Saturday morning at 11:33 a.m. ET in a SpaceX capsule. 

It was the first Pacific splashdown for NASA in 50 years, and the third for SpaceX with people on board. 

NASA astronauts last splashed down in the Pacific in 1975, during the Apollo-Soyuz mission, the first crewed international space mission that involved Americans and Soviets. 

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The crew launched in March, replacing Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who were left stuck at the space station for nine months on what was meant to be a week-long mission after the Boeing Starliner they arrived in suffered thruster problems and helium leaks.

NASA concluded returning them to Earth in the capsule was too risky, so the Starliner flew back crewless, and Wilmore and Williams came home in a SpaceX capsule in March after their replacements arrived. 

Wilmore announced his retirement after 25 years with NASA this week. 

“We want this mission, our mission, to be a reminder of what people can do when we work together, when we explore together,” McClain said before leaving the space station on Friday, mentioning “some tumultuous times on Earth.” 

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She said she was looking forward to “doing nothing for a couple of days” once back home, and her crewmates were excited about hot showers and burgers. 

Earlier this year, SpaceX decided to switch their splashdowns from Florida to California to reduce the risk of debris falling on populated areas. 

After exiting the spacecraft, the crew received medical checks before being flown via helicopter to meet up with a NASA aircraft bound for Houston.

“Overall, the mission went great, glad to have the crew back,” Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said in a press conference after splashdown. “SpaceX did a great job of recovering the crew again on the West Coast.”

Dina Contella, deputy manager for NASA’s International Space Station program, added that she was “pretty happy to see the Crew 10 team back on Earth. They looked great, and they are doing great.”

She noted the crew had orbited the Earth 2,368 times and traveled more than 63 million miles during their 146 days at the space station.