Four Astronauts Return to Earth After Eight Months on the Space Station

Four astronauts who launched to the International Space Station in February as part of an unplanned crew swap returned to Earth on Thursday, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off Los Angeles aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule after about eight months in orbit.

NASA’s Jessica Meir, the commander, and Jack Hathaway, the pilot, flew with Sophie Adenot of France, representing the European Space Agency, and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. They undocked from the station on Wednesday. CBS News reported that the capsule, named Freedom, fired its thrusters for about nine minutes late Thursday morning to drop out of orbit, plunged through the atmosphere at nearly five miles per second, and settled under parachutes about 50 miles west of Los Angeles at 11:34 a.m. Eastern time, closing out a 237-day mission.

“We are so excited to be back on planet Earth,” Meir radioed after splashdown, according to the Associated Press. Recovery teams lifted the capsule onto a SpaceX ship, and flight surgeons checked the crew before they were flown ashore and sent on to the Johnson Space Center in Houston for debriefing and reconditioning.

The mission began under unusual circumstances. Meir’s crew lifted off from Cape Canaveral on February 13 to replace four astronauts who had been brought home early after one of them, NASA’s Mike Fincke, fell ill. It was NASA’s first medical evacuation in 65 years of human spaceflight, the AP reported. Their own return was then delayed when the crew sent to replace them arrived about three weeks late because of repairs to its capsule.

In orbit, the four circled the planet 3,792 times and traveled nearly 101 million miles, by CBS’s count. Meir took part in four spacewalks and Adenot in three, doing maintenance and upgrades on the 28-year-old outpost, while the crew ran scores of experiments for researchers on the ground. They also watched from orbit as the Artemis II astronauts flew around the moon in April.

Before leaving, Meir said she most looked forward to seeing her young daughter and feeling a breeze again, while Hathaway put a long hot shower near the top of his list. Meir also reflected on how much of the planet is ocean when seen from above and urged more be done to protect it.

Seven people remain aboard the station. According to CBS News, they are the four members of Crew 13, who launched October 1 for a six-month stay, and a three-person Soyuz crew of two Russian cosmonauts and NASA astronaut Anil Menon, who arrived in July. The station has hosted 298 visitors from 26 countries since 2000, according to NASA.