Four astronauts, including Satoshi Furukawa of Japan, splashed down off Florida in the Gulf of Mexico on their return to Earth early Tuesday, following a more than six-month mission on the International Space Station.
The SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft landed in the waters off Pensacola at 5:47 a.m., with a NASA thermal camera showing all four of its drogue parachutes had deployed for the night-time landing after their 18½ hour journey from the ISS.
Furukawa, also a medical doctor, was part of a team with NASA's Jasmin Moghbeli, Andreas Mogensen of Denmark and Konstantin Borisov of Russia. The Crew-7 mission came to an end after the SpaceX Dragon capsule splashed safely into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida at 5:47 a.m. The capsule was retrieved from the sea less than half an hour after splashdown, with the crew waving to the recovery team as they opened the hatch.