SpaceX successfully brings crew of four home from the International Space Station

A nighttime view of the Crew Dragon capsule just before splashdown | Image: NASA

A crew of four astronauts successfully returned to Earth this evening, splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola inside a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. Their arrival back on the planet brings an end to a more than six-month-long stay aboard the International Space Station, and it paves the way for another crew of four to launch to the ISS in the coming week.

The crew includes two NASA astronauts, Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide from the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, and French astronaut Thomas Pesquet from the European Space Agency. The group launched to the space station on April 23rd atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, part of a mission called Crew-2.

Their flight marks the...

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