Spacecraft splashes down off Florida’s Gulf coast after five-month science mission following nine-hour flight from International Space Station.
Four crew members aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule splashed down off Florida’s Gulf coast on Saturday, returning safely from a five-month science mission on the International Space Station. The SpaceX capsule, dubbed Endurance, parachuted into waters off the coast of Tampa just after 9pm local time carrying two Nasa astronauts, a Japanese astronaut and one Russian cosmonaut after a roughly nine-hour flight from the orbital research lab, a Nasa-SpaceX webcast showed. The Crew-5 team launched from Florida on October 6 to conduct routine science aboard the station. It included cosmonaut Anna Kikina, 38, who became the first Russian to fly on an American spacecraft in 20 years, and Nasa flight commander Nicole Aunapu Mann, 45, the first Native American woman sent into orbit.
