ASTRONAUTS RETURN TO EARTH AFTER 5-MONTH PILOT RESCUE MISSION

NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov splashed down off the coast of San Diego in their SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.

Sun 10 August 2025:

Four astronauts safely returned to Earth after a five-month mission to the International Space Station (ISS), where they assisted stranded Boeing Starliner test pilots.

Their SpaceX capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off Southern California on Saturday, one day after leaving the ISS.

“Welcome home,” SpaceX Mission Control radioed.

Splashing down were NASA’s Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan’s Takuya Onishi and Russia’s Kirill Peskov. They launched in March as replacements for the two NASA astronauts assigned to Starliner’s botched demo.

Starliner malfunctions kept Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams at the space station for more than nine months instead of a week.

NASA ordered Boeing’s new crew capsule to return empty and switched the pair to SpaceX. They left soon after McClain and her crew arrived to take their places. Wilmore has since retired from NASA.

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Before leaving the space station on Friday, McClain made note of “some tumultuous times on Earth”, with people struggling.

“We want this mission, our mission, to be a reminder of what people can do when we work together, when we explore together,” she said.

McClain looked forward to “doing nothing for a couple of days” once back home in Houston. High on her crewmates’ wish list: Hot showers and juicy burgers.

SpaceX marked its third Pacific splashdown with crew aboard, the first for NASA astronauts in five decades. Earlier this year, Elon Musk’s company shifted capsule landings from Florida to California’s coast to minimize debris risks over populated areas.

Two private crews were the first to land in the Pacific. The last NASA Pacific return was the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission, a Cold War-era orbital rendezvous between American and Soviet astronauts.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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