NASA Mission With SpaceX’s Crew-6 Returns to Earth After 186 Days in Space

Splashdown of Dragon confirmed – welcome back to Earth, Steve, @Astro_Woody, Andrey, and @Astro_Alneyadi! pic.twitter.com/ph27m0wP30

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 4, 2023

After 186 days in space, four astronauts have safely returned to Earth. The SpaceX Crew-6 departed from the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday morning and touched down at the SpaceX Dragon Endeavour in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, just after midnight on September 4. This completed a six-month-long stay at the ISS.

Crew-6's multinational team includes two NASA astronauts, Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, United Arab Emirates (UAE) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. After landing in the ocean, a team of speedboats helped recover Crew-6 from the Dragon Endeavour. They are currently receiving full medical checkups after enduring such a prolonged period in space.

Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX, made the announcement on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Splashdown of Dragon confirmed—welcome back to Earth, Steve, @Astro_Woody, Andrey, and @Astro_Alneyadi!” SpaceX writes. Crew-6 launched on March 2, 2023, from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and arrived at the ISS the following day. “It was a nominal return,” Benji Reed, SpaceX's director of human spaceflight programs, says. “Dragon is healthy, the parachutes performed as expected, and our recovery teams did great. Dragon did great, and the crew appeared to do awesome.”

SpaceX's Crew-7 already left for the ISS in August, replacing the team that returned to Earth. The group of four astronauts will live and work in space until February, fulfilling the company's contract with NASA which covers at least eight more missions to the ISS.

SpaceX's Crew-6 returned to Earth after 186 days in space.

Dragon splashes down off the coast of Florida with the Crew-6 astronauts, completing Dragon’s sixth long-duration mission to the @space_station pic.twitter.com/v2FWsf8Nli

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 4, 2023