'Splashdown!': SpaceX Crew-5 Land Off Tampa as Near-Six-Month NASA Mission Ends

SpaceX’s Crew-5 mission for NASA formally came to an end on Saturday, March 11, as its four astronauts successfully splashed down in the sea off Tampa, Florida, at 9.02 pm local time.

Footage shared on Twitter by NASA shows the SpaceX Dragon Endurance spacecraft land in the Gulf of Mexico, having departed the International Space Station a little under seven hours earlier.

Crew-5 was made up of NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and Anna Kikina of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, NASA said.

The crew spent close to six months on board the ISS, having arrived in October 2022. They spent their final days on board handing over research experiments they had been conducting to the four-person Crew-6 team, who arrived at the ISS on March 3. Credit: NASA via Storyful