The four astronauts of SpaceX's Crew 7 mission returned to Earth early Tuesday morning (March 12), with a live broadcast of their return.
Crew 7's Dragon capsule, Endurance, touched down off the coast of Pensacola, Florida at 5:50 a.m. EDT (9:50 UTC). Recovery workers arrived at the capsule about three minutes later and were tracking the recovery process using thermal cameras.
Related: SpaceX Crew-7 astronauts leave the ISS for return to Earth on March 12th
The parachute that brought Endurance back to Earth was recovered after recovery crews tested it for both pyrotechnic residue and toxic substances. After these safety checks, the Dragon capsule was hoisted from the Gulf of Mexico to a recovery vessel using a hydraulic lift at 6:13 a.m. EDT (10:13 GMT).
Crew-7 astronauts exited the Endurance Dragon capsule at 6:36 a.m. EDT (1036 UTC), with Andy Mogensen being the first to receive assistance from the capsule. After returning to Earth after 199 days in low Earth orbit, the crew will visit a medical facility to check on their health.
Endurance undocked from the International Space Station on Monday (March 11), beginning Crew 7's journey home after the astronauts spent six and a half months in the orbiting laboratory.
Crew-7 is made up of NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghberg, European Space Agency's Andreas Mogensen, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Satoshi Furukawa, and Russian space agency Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov.
The mission launched to the ISS on August 26, 2023, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and arrived at the orbital complex one day later. The launch marked the first spaceflight for Moghbeli and Borisov, and the second for Mogensen and Furukawa.
The Crew-7 quartet briefly overlapped with its successor, the four astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-8 mission, which arrived at the ISS last Tuesday (March 5).
As these mission names suggest, SpaceX currently conducts eight flight flights to the ISS for NASA (plus one crewed test flight to an orbiting laboratory). The agency selected SpaceX for the job in September 2014.
Aerospace giant Boeing also had a commercial crew contract at the time, but had not yet flown on a NASA astronaut mission. But that should change soon. The first astronaut flight on Boeing's Starliner capsule is scheduled to launch in early May.
The mission, called the Crew Flight Test, will send two astronauts to the ISS, where they will stay for about 10 days.
