The successful landing marks the completion of their mission to assist stranded pilots on the International Space Station.
Their SpaceX capsule made a touchdown in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Southern California, on Saturday, one day after leaving the orbiting laboratory.
“Welcome home,” was the message relayed by SpaceX Mission Control.
The astronauts returning were NASA’s Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan’s Takuya Onishi, and Russia’s Kirill Peskov. They had launched in March to stand in for two NASA astronauts whose expedition on Starliner had to be prolonged due to abnormalities in the spacecraft.
Issues with Starliner led Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to remain on the space station for more than nine months, instead of their originally scheduled week-long stay.
NASA decided to send the crew capsule back without passengers and opted to use SpaceX for the astronauts, who left soon after McClain and her team arrived to replace Wilmore and Williams. Wilmore has since retired from NASA.
In a message before leaving the space station on Friday, McClain pointed out the “turbulent times on Earth,” highlighting the hardships faced by people.
“Our mission is a testimony to what people can accomplish when we collaborate, when we explore together,” she stated.
Upon returning to her home in Houston, McClain expressed her desire to relax “for a couple of days.” Her crew members yearn for simple pleasures like hot showers and juicy burgers.
This was SpaceX’s third occasion where it has brought people back to Earth via a splashdown in the Pacific, but it marked the first time in 50 years that a NASA crew has experienced this type of landing. Earlier this year, SpaceX changed its capsule return location from Florida to California to lessen the risk of debris affecting populated areas. Private crews had previously been the only ones to have return experiences in the Pacific.
The last instance of NASA astronauts returning from the Pacific was during the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission, a historic time of US-Soviet cooperation in space during the Cold War era.
