4 space station fliers return to Earth with Pacific Ocean splashdown

Two NASA astronauts, a Japanese flier and a Russian cosmonaut plunged back to Earth on Saturday, safely splashing down in the Pacific Ocean, west of San Diego, to wrap up a five-month mission to space.

Strapped into SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endurance, commander Anne McClain, pilot Nichole Ayers, Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi and cosmonaut Kirill Peskov gently splashed down at 11:33 a.m. EDT, 17-and-a-half hours after undocking from the International Space Station.

SpaceX support crews deployed near the landing site quickly converged on the capsule to rig the craft for a lift onto the deck of a recovery ship.

After hatch opening, the station fliers were helped out of the spacecraft for initial medical checks while they began readjusting to the unfamiliar pull of gravity after 148 days in space. All four appeared healthy and in good spirits.

A helicopter was standing by to fly all four back to shore, where a NASA plane was waiting to fly them back to the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The Crew 10 fliers undocked from the station’s forward port at 6:15 p.m. Friday, two days later than originally planned due to high winds off the southern California coast.

After moving a safe distance away from the lab complex, McClain and company enjoyed a few final hours in space before their ship was lined up for a southwest-to-northeast trajectory toward San Diego.

At 10:39 a.m., the Crew Dragon’s forward Draco thrusters ignited and fired for more than 17 minutes to slow the craft by about 257 mph, just enough to drop the orbit into the discernible atmosphere about 43 minutes later.

Still moving at some 17,000 mph — nearly 84 football fields per second — the Crew Dragon slammed into the discernible atmosphere and was quickly engulfed in a fireball of atmospheric friction as it sharply decelerated to more terrestrial velocities.

Nearing the ocean, the spacecraft’s main parachutes unfurled and inflated, lowering Endeavour to a gentle splashdown.

Left behind in orbit were the crew’s replacements, Crew 11 commander Zena Cardman, co-pilot Mike Fincke, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui and cosmonaut Oleg Platonov. Also on board: Soyuz MS-27/73S commander Sergey Ryzhikov, Alexey Zubritsky and NASA astronaut Jonny Kim.

McClain and her crewmates spent four days showing the new crew the ins and outs of space station operation before bidding them farewell and undocking on Friday.

Crew 10 was the first NASA-sponsored crew to land in the Pacific Ocean. All previous NASA Crew Dragon flights ended with splashdowns off the Florida coast.

But SpaceX recently decided to change landing locales to make sure any debris from the Crew Dragon’s no-longer-needed trunk section, discarded shortly before re-entry, splashes harmlessly into the Pacific, well away from any populated areas.

Two commercial Crew Dragon flights landed in the Pacific earlier this year to pave the way for Crew 10.