SpaceX Dragon Endurance Returns Crew-7 Astronauts To Earth: Splashdown

Parachutes guided SpaceX Dragon Endurance as it splashed down at 0950 UTC(on March 12) off the coast of Pensacola, Florida. Following checks for both pyrotechnic residuals and poisonous materials, the recovery crew lifted the capsule from the Gulf of Mexico onto a recovery ship at 1013 UTC using a hydraulic lift.

Crew-7 consists of NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Satoshi Furukawa and Konstantin Borisov, a cosmonaut with Russia's space agency, Roscosmos. They exited the Dragon Endurance at 1036 UTC), with Mogensen assisted from the capsule first. After 199 days in low-Earth orbit and their descent back to Earth, the crew will visit a medical facility to check their health.

The mission launched to the International Space Station atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Aug. 26, 2023 and arrived at the orbiting laboratory a day later. After the astronauts' 6.5-month stay, Endurance undocked from the ISS on Monday (March 11) to begin Crew-7's journey back to Earth.

The Crew-7 quartet's time in the space station overlapped briefly with their successors, the four astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-8 mission, which arrived at the ISS last Tuesday (March 5).

WATCH SpaceX Dragon Endurance leave the space Station and splashdown back on earth