SpaceX brings NASA astronauts home safe in milestone mission
NASA astronaut Robert Behnken giving a thumbs up to onlookers as he boards a plane at Naval Air Station Pensacola to return him and NASA astronaut Douglas Hurley home to Houston a few hours after the duo landed in their SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft off the coast of Pensacola, Florida on August 2, 2020. AFP PHOTO | NASA | BILL INGALLS | HANDOUT
The successful mission, carried out jointly by SpaceX and NASA, demonstrated that the United States once again has the capacity to send its astronauts to space and bring them back.
It was the first water landing for a crewed US spaceship since the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission.
A number of civilian boats swarmed the landing zone as a recovery ship sped to the scorched capsule and brought it aboard.
America's first crewed spaceship to fly to the International Space Station in nearly a decade returned safely to Earth on Sunday, splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico.
The successful mission, carried out jointly by SpaceX and NASA, demonstrated that the United States once again has the capacity to send its astronauts to space and bring them back.
