Astronauts return to Earth with SpaceX after 5 months at the International Space Station

This image provided by NASA shows, from left, NASA's SpaceX Crew-10 members JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi, NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov posing for a portrait inside the SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft that carried them to the International Space Station and will return them back to Earth. (NASA via AP)

Four astronauts returned to Earth on Saturday after hustling to the International Space Station five months ago to relieve the stuck test pilots of Boeing’s Starliner.

Their SpaceX capsule parachuted into the Pacific off the Southern California coast a day after departing the orbiting lab.

“Welcome home,” SpaceX Mission Control radioed.

Splashing down were NASA’s Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan’s Takuya Onishi and Russia’s Kirill Peskov. They launched in March as replacements for the two NASA astronauts assigned to Starliner’s botched demo.

Starliner malfunctions kept Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams at the space station for more than nine months instead of a week. NASA ordered Boeing’s new crew capsule to return empty and switched the pair to SpaceX. They left soon after McClain and her crew arrived to take their places. Wilmore has since retired from NASA.

Before leaving the space station on Friday, McClain made note of “some tumultuous times on Earth” with people struggling.

“We want this mission, our mission, to be a reminder of what people can do when we work together, when we explore together,” she said.

McClain looked forward to “doing nothing for a couple of days” once back home in Houston. High on her crewmates’ wish list: hot showers and juicy burgers.

It was SpaceX’s third Pacific splashdown with people on board, but the first for a NASA crew in 50 years. Elon Musk’s company switched capsule returns from Florida to California’s coast earlier this year to reduce the risk of debris falling on populated areas. Back-to-back private crews were the first to experience Pacific homecomings.

The last time NASA astronauts returned to the Pacific from space was during the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission, a détente meet-up of Americans and Soviets in orbit.

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Marcia Dunn, The Associated Press