Crew-5 Astronauts Return To Earth Aboard SpaceX Dragon Endurance Spacecraft: Splashdown

SpaceX Dragon Endurance spacecraft splashed down in darkness after streaking over the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Tampa Bay, Florida, at 0202 UTC on March 12, wrapping up a five-month mission to the International Space Station, ISS, by  NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann, Japan's Koichi Wakata and cosmonaut Anna Kikina, the first Russian to fly on a private American spacecraft.

"Thank you SpaceX, that was one heck of a ride!" Mann radioed to SpaceX's mission control team after splashdown. "We're happy to be home." The mission marked his first spaceflight ever.

The Crew-5 members spent 157 days in space during their mission to the space station, that also marked the first spaceflight ever for Cassada and Kikina; but the fifth flight for Wakata, who now has 505 days in space under his belt.

Endurance undocked from the space station earlier on Saturday(March 11) at 0720 UTC; then performed a series of maneuvers to position itself on course for reentry to the earth's atmosphere. The spacecraft deployed its parachutes after reentry for the safe splashdown.

The splashdown early Sunday, wraps up SpaceX's fifth operational mission for NASA's Commercial Crew Program, swapping personnel aboard the space station with the recently arrived members of Crew-6.

In January, Endurance was temporarily outfitted to carry an extra person -- NASA's Frank Rubio -- in case an emergency evacuation of the ISS were required, after his ride home, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft docked at the station sprang a leak and lost all of its coolant, apparently after suffering a meteoroid strike. Russia's space agency Roscosmos ultimately launched a replacement Soyuz to serve as the ride home this fall, for Rubio and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin.

WATCH SpaceX Dragon Endurance undock from space station and splashdown off the coast of Tampa Bay, Florida.