A SpaceX capsule made a successful landing early Friday morning in the Gulf of Mexico, just off the coast of Florida, carrying a crew of four that included three Americans and one Russian. Originally scheduled to return in August, their homecoming was delayed for nearly two months due to issues with Boeing’s Starliner capsule and Hurricane Milton.
The astronauts—Nasa’s Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, and Jeanette Epps, along with Russia’s Alexander Grebenkin—spent nearly eight months aboard the International Space Station. Barratt, the sole veteran among the crew, expressed gratitude towards their support teams back on Earth, acknowledging their efforts to adapt and manage the unexpected challenges during the extended mission.
Following their landing, the astronauts underwent standard medical evaluations before being transported to a medical facility for further checks, which Nasa described as a precautionary measure. Though typically tight-lipped regarding astronaut health matters, Nasa refrained from disclosing specifics about the situation or the crew’s condition. However, at a post-splashdown briefing, a Nasa official remarked that “the crew is doing great” and did not indicate any health concerns, though there were minor issues regarding the Crew Dragon spacecraft’s parachute deployment.
Richard Jones, deputy manager of Nasa’s commercial crew program, noted that the initial braking parachutes experienced some “debris strikes” and that one parachute in a subsequent set took longer to deploy than expected. Nevertheless, he assured that these incidents did not compromise crew safety and described the splashdown conditions as “ideal” for recovery.
The crew will be succeeded by two Starliner test pilots—Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams—whose own mission was extended from eight days to eight months, along with two astronauts who recently launched with SpaceX. These four will remain in orbit until February, restoring the space station’s crew size back to its normal count of seven, which includes four Americans and three Russians.
This particular Crew Dragon spacecraft, marking its fifth flight, has logged a total of 702 days in orbit since its inaugural mission, as reported by William Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice president of flight reliability and a former senior official at Nasa.
