Four Astronauts Return to Earth After Five-Month ISS Mission

Four astronauts splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean off Southern California on Saturday, wrapping up a five-month mission to the International Space Station (ISS) that began as a rescue operation for Boeing’s troubled Starliner program.

NASA’s Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan’s Takuya Onishi, and Russia’s Kirill Peskov landed aboard a SpaceX capsule a day after departing the orbiting laboratory.

“Welcome home,” Mission Control radioed moments after parachutes deployed and the crew hit the water.

The team launched in March to replace NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who had been stranded on the ISS for more than nine months due to Starliner malfunctions. Originally slated for just a week-long demo, the Starliner mission was cut short after repeated technical issues. NASA ordered the capsule to return empty, transferring Wilmore and Williams to a SpaceX ride back to Earth. Wilmore has since retired from NASA.

Before departure, McClain reflected on the mission’s broader meaning:

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

Now back on Earth, the astronauts have simple plans: McClain joked about “doing nothing for a couple of days” in Houston, while her crewmates looked forward to hot showers and juicy burgers.

This marked SpaceX’s third crewed Pacific splashdown — but the first for a NASA mission in half a century. The last time NASA astronauts returned via the Pacific was the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission, a symbolic Cold War-era handshake in orbit. Elon Musk’s company shifted splashdowns from Florida to California earlier this year to minimize risks from falling debris over populated areas.