NASA astronauts splash down after journey home aboard SpaceX capsule

U.S. astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, who flew to the International Space Station in SpaceX's new Crew Dragon, splashed down in the capsule in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday after a two-month voyage that was NASA's first crewed mission from home soil in nine years.

U.S. astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, who flew to the International Space Station in SpaceX's new Crew Dragon, splashed down in the capsule in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday after a two-month voyage that was NASA's first crewed mission from home soil in nine years. Behnken and Hurley left the station on Saturday and returned home to land in the waves off Florida's Pensacola coast on schedule at 2:48 p.m. ET following a 21-hour overnight journey aboard Crew Dragon "Endeavor."

The successful splashdown was a final key test of whether Elon Musk's spacecraft can transport astronauts to and from orbit — a feat no private company has ever accomplished before. For the return sequence, on-board thrusters and two sets of parachutes worked autonomously to slow the acorn-shaped capsule, bringing Behnken and Hurley's speed of 17,500 miles per hour in orbit down to 350 mph upon atmospheric reentry, and eventually 15 mph at splashdown.

The crew will spend up to an hour floating inside the capsule before joint recovery teams from SpaceX and NASA retrieve them for a helicopter trip ashore. There the duo will undergo medical checks ahead of a flight to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)