4 space station planes return to Earth with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean

Two NASA astronauts, a Japanese aviator and a Russian cosmonaut returned to Earth Saturday, safely docking in the Pacific Ocean west of San Diego to conclude a five-month mission in space.

Attached to SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endurance, Commander Anne McClain, pilot Nichole Ayers, Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi and cosmonaut Kirill Peskov gently splashed down at 11:33 a.m. EDT, 17 and a half hours later undocking from the International Space Station.

SpaceX support teams deployed near the landing site quickly converged on the capsule to prepare the craft for transport to the deck of a recovery ship.

After the hatch opened, the station’s pilots were helped out of the spacecraft for initial medical checks as they began to readjust to the unfamiliar pull of gravity after 148 days in space. All four appeared healthy and in good spirits.

A helicopter was ready to take all four back to shore, where a NASA plane was waiting to take them back to the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The 10 crew planes departed the station’s forward port at 6:15 p.m. Friday, two days later than originally planned due to high winds off the southern California coast.

After moving a safe distance from the laboratory complex, McClain and company enjoyed a few final hours in space before their ship was aligned for a southwest-northeast trajectory toward San Diego.

At 10:39 a.m., the Crew Dragon’s forward Draco thrusters ignited and fired for more than 17 minutes to slow the craft from about 257 mph, just enough to drop from orbit into the perceptible atmosphere about 43 minutes later.

Still moving at around 17,000 mph – nearly 84 football fields per second – the Crew Dragon slammed into the perceptible atmosphere and was quickly engulfed in a fireball of atmospheric friction as it abruptly decelerated to more terrestrial speeds.

Near the ocean, the spacecraft’s main parachutes deployed and inflated, lowering Endeavor to a gentle water landing.

The crew’s replacements, Crew 11 commander Zena Cardman, co-pilot Mike Fincke, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui and cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, remained in orbit. Also on board: Soyuz MS-27/73S Commander Sergey Ryzhikov, Alexey Zubritsky and NASA astronaut Jonny Kim.

McClain and his crewmates spent four days showing the new crew the ins and outs of operating the space station before bidding them farewell and undocking on Friday.

Crew 10 was the first NASA-sponsored crew to land in the Pacific Ocean. All previous NASA Crew Dragon flights have ended with water landings off the coast of Florida.

But SpaceX recently decided to change the landing locations to ensure that any debris from the Crew Dragon’s no longer needed trunk section, discarded shortly before re-entry, splashes harmlessly into the Pacific, well away from any populated areas.

Two commercial Crew Dragon flights landed in the Pacific earlier this year to pave the way for Crew 10.