The capsule with four astronauts from the ISS landed in the sea near Florida as planned

The Crew Dragon spacecraft landed in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida at around 6.43 a.m. on Friday with four astronauts who had participated in the third long-term mission to the International Space Station (ISS), served by billionaire Elon Musk. NASA’s four astronauts and its European counterparts, ESA, have conducted a number of experiments, from growing zero-gravity chili peppers to testing robots.

The quartet, made up of Americans Thomas Marshburn, his NASA colleagues Kayla Barron and Raja Chari and German Matthias Maurer of ESA, has been on the ISS since last November. The astronauts spent 175 days in zero gravity. On the last day of the mission, Marshburn handed over command of the station to Russian Oleg Artemev.

The crew, who returned to the ground, received the designation Commercial Crew 3 from NASA, as this is the third full-fledged long-term mission operated by SpaceX machines. She takes care of the technology, coordinates launch and landing, while NASA provides launch pads in Florida and manages the operation of the space station. Since the end of April, another four-member crew with the designation Crew 4 has been on board the ISS.

SpaceX has had a total of seven manned rocket launches in the last two years – five for NASA and two for private use. It has been operating cargo flights on the ISS since 2012.

In May 2020, the Crew Dragon became the first US spacecraft to bring a human crew to the ISS since the end of the US space shuttle program in the meantime.

The astronauts performed a series of experiments on the ISS and brought about 250 kilograms of cargo to Earth, including many research samples.