PANAMA CITY, Fla. – Plunging through the Earth’s atmosphere and splashing down by moonlight SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft successfully returned three American and one Japanese astronaut to Earth following six months in space.
NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker along with Japanese space agency, JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi first began their journey home by undocking the SpaceX Dragon Resilience from the International Space Station Saturday evening.
The four astronauts make up Crew-1, the first long-duration mission to the International Space Station with SpaceX’s Dragon capsule.
The Dragon spacecraft called Resilience blasted through Earth’s atmosphere after 2 a.m. ET, then aided by a parachute system the spacecraft