SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft, with the Crew-9 mission crew, has returned to Earth, the website of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) reported.
The ship fell into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of the US state of Florida on Tuesday at 5:57 p.m. Eastern time in the US. Crew Dragon undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday at 1:06 a.m.
The Crew-9 mission crew included NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore, Sunita Williams and Nick Hague, as well as Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov. Wilmore and Williams arrived at the ISS as part of the first crewed mission of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, which was launched by Boeing on June 5, 2024. They were scheduled to remain in orbit until June 14. Later, due to a malfunction of the ship associated with the failure of several maneuvering engines during docking, the return dates were postponed first to June 18, then to June 26, and finally for an indefinite period of time. Ultimately, NASA decided that the astronauts would return to Earth as part of the Crew-9 mission in the spring of 2025.
Roscosmos and NASA conduct cross-flights on the ISS program. So some American astronauts fly to the ISS on Soyuz spacecraft, and some Russian cosmonauts fly on the American Crew Dragon spacecraft.