Four astronauts safely returned to Earth on August 9, 2025, after a five-month mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Their SpaceX Dragon capsule parachuted into the Pacific Ocean off the Southern California coast, marking a successful splashdown just one day after departing the orbiting laboratory.
The crew included NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan’s JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Russian cosmonaut Kirill Peskov from Roscosmos. They launched in March as replacements for two NASA astronauts delayed onboard due to Boeing Starliner’s malfunctions.
This mission was crucial after Boeing’s Starliner experienced issues that kept astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams aboard the ISS for over nine months, instead of the planned week. NASA then assigned Boeing’s capsule to return empty and switched the astronauts’ transport to SpaceX.
Before leaving the ISS, Anne McClain reflected on “tumultuous times on Earth” and highlighted the mission as a symbol of international cooperation and human exploration.
This marked SpaceX’s third Pacific splashdown with crew onboard, and the first NASA crew to return to the Pacific Ocean in 50 years—the previous being the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission.
