Astronauts splash down safely in SpaceX 'Dragon' capsule | DW News

Four astronauts have landed safely back on Earth after spending almost half a year aboard the International Space Station. Their SpaceX 'Dragon' capsule touched down off the coast of Florida in the first nighttime landing in over 50 years. It was the first crew mission run by a private company as opposed to NASA.

The astronauts, three American and on Japanese, splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico in a rare nighttime landing. The journey home took only six and a half hours.

The mission was part of NASA's public private partnership with Elon Musk's rocket company SpaceX. It's being viewed as a step closer to achieving commercial space travel in the near future.

SpaceX will launch another mission for NASA later this year, and is also planning its first all-civilian trip to orbit.

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[astrophysics]

"Thanks again for flying SpaceX" this is foreshadowing that space travel could be as normal as riding a plane.

[Blake]

Wait a second, it's been 6 months already? COVID did really turn Time into a shapeless soup.

[Homoprimatesapiens]

Congratulations Space X. You r going from good to excellent. 👍👌

[rosafamin]

Elion mosx un hombre que a echo más que la naza en tonces el espacio no está tan lejos ni tan alto ni tan inalcanzable pues un hombre a escho más que la naza en años

[austinridley]

We are literally watching our species go from a barley out of orbit species to a multi planet species in a matter of 15-20 years the progress space x and NaSa have made together and will make together in the future is amazing. Humanity is one step closer to unlocking the mysteries of the universe and we are finally taking our sphere of influence to a planetary scale I’m so happy with how this is going I just pray that the government doesn’t cut funding and ruin all of their amazing work. For all we really know as well we could be alone a glitch in the system complex life might not be as common as we and researchers hoped for. Imagine all the different factors and times our species was almost wiped out including the last 150 years with the insane weapons this world had invented. The fact we’ve made it this far has such a small chance of ever even happening bless whatever god or creator that made us, Made us the most unique smart, dumb monkey there’s ever been 😂

[soravulpis]

Stop privatizing space. All space development should be public, open source and free to all.

[canonbarst]

"my hoop is one day everyone in space"? ist that to much for one day? we have 7.8 Zillion world population right now.

[kelvinmax]

learnt to manage my money through investments and it really works for me.

[stevegordon]

Great waste of taxpayers money, promoting a fraud.

[mihiec]

Playground for rich.... And yet people are dying because of wars and covid.