The Crew-5 mission crew sent into space by a SpaceX rocket on behalf of NASA returned to Earth on Saturday after a five-month mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
The Endurance capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico shortly after 9 p.m. local time (3 a.m. Paris time) off the west coast of Florida, with Japan's Koichi Wakata on board, Russia's Anna Kikina, as well as as NASA's Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada.
Crew-5, launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida in October, was Koichi Wakata's fifth space mission and the first for the other members. Nicole Mann became the first Native American sent into space. Before leaving the ISS, the crew met that of Crew-6, which left on March 1 to take over.
Less than a week earlier, a Russian Soyuz rocket lifted off from Kazakhstan to replace the MS-22 spacecraft, also Russian, which was damaged while docking with the ISS.
The three MS-22 astronauts, an American and two Russians, were originally scheduled to return to Earth at the end of March after a six-month mission, but they will ultimately stay there for almost a year.
Cooperation on the ISS is the last area where Washington and Moscow have continued to work together since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
