SpaceX splashes down; astronauts return home from six-month ISS mission

SpaceX splashes down; astronauts return home from six-month ISS mission

NEW YORK — Four astronauts splashed down off the coast of Florida aboard their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, capping off their six-month stay in space. Their journey kicked off Monday just after 2 p.m. ET when the astronauts strapped into the Crew Dragon capsule, which had remained attached to the International Space Station since it arrived with the crew in April. The spacecraft spent nearly nine hours slowly maneuvering through orbit, approaching the thick inner layer of Earth's atmosphere before the Crew Dragon lit up its thrusters to safely slice into the air, deploy parachutes and splash down in the Gulf of Mexico around 10:30 p.m. Monday. A fleet of rescue ships awaited their arrival and brought the four astronauts — NASA's Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, French astronaut Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency, and Akihiko Hoshide from Japan — to safety. "It's great to be back to planet Earth," Kimbrough was heard saying in the moments after splashdown on NASA's webcast. During their stay in space, Kimbrough, McArthur, Pesquet and Hoshide oversaw numerous science experiments and even tested the first chilly peppers grown in space. They also conducted spacewalks — in which they don the iconic puffy