FLORIDA — After five long months of being on the International Space Station, the four members of the Crew-5 returned home in a splashdown off the coast of Florida on Saturday night.

The joint NASA-SpaceX Crew-5 mission came to an end on Saturday, March 11. Back in October 2022, NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Koichi Wakata, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina left the Earth from the Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A.

But at 2:05 a.m. EST, Saturday, the four boarded SpaceX’s Dragon capsule the Endurance and undocked from the ISS’ Harmony module and take the return trip home. They had a splash down off the coast of Tampa, Fla. — known as a Gulf Landing — at around 9:02 p.m. EST, Saturday. The splashdown time had originally been set for 9:19 p.m. EST.

During a series of parachute deployments on the Dragon, it will slow the spacecraft from an orbital speed of about 17,500 mph to 350 mph when it reaches atmospheric re-entry and then a gentle 16 mph during splashdown, NASA explained during its live broadcast of the landing.  

“Thank you SpaceX, that was one heck of a ride. We’re happy to be home,” said Mann right after the splashdown while still inside the Endurance.

Meeting their replacements and having adventures

After Crew-5 members greeted Crew-6 on Friday, March 3 once they boarded the ISS, they got to spend about a week with their replacements. 

“OK, well, we are all gathered here in our final moments on board the International Space Station as Crew-5 is getting ready to depart. We just wanted to take a couple of moments to express our thoughts and give our thanks to the tons of people on Earth who helped to make this possible. It has been an incredible expedition and I have been so honored just to be a part of it,” said Mann during a farewell moment on the ISS days before the undocking.

She thanked her Crew-5 members, saying they have trained together for a long time and faced many challenges during the last five months.

Some of those challenges were when a Roscosmos’ Soyuz craft — docked on the ISS — sprang some leaks after a tiny meteoroid struck it back in December. It extended the mission for cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, and astronaut Frank Rubio from six months to one year, with them returning to Earth in September 2023 as they wait for a new capsule to be ready for their crew replacements.

Before the Crew-5 undocked, there were seven people on the orbiting space laboratory.

About the mission

More than 200 science experiments and technology that the Crew-5 conducted during their time on the ISS.

For example, one experiment allowed researchers to study the process of printing human organs in space using the BioFabrication Facility machine.

Another test was conducted during the Liquid Behavior investigation, which studied how liquids move in a container in virtual lunar gravity. The purpose of this test will determine how it will benefit such things as lunar rovers, life support systems and fuel tanks, according to NASA.

And, they even took the time to grow space tomatoes, where eventually astronauts both on the ISS and on future deep-space missions can grow their own food.

Watch the splashdown