CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – SpaceX returned four astronauts from the International Space Station on Sunday, making the first U.S.
crew splashdown in darkness since the Apollo 8 moonshot. The Dragon capsule parachuted into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Panama City, Florida, just before 3 a.m., ending the second astronaut flight for Elon Musk’s company.
It was an express trip home, lasting just 6 1/2 hours. The astronauts, three American and one Japanese, flew back in the same capsule — named Resilience — in which they launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in November.
Their 167-day mission is the longest for astronauts launching from the U.S. The previous record of 84 days was set by NASA’s final Skylab station crew in 1974.