BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. — After a successful splashdown off the California coast near San Diego at 3:41 a.m. EST, NASA’s SpaceX Crew-11 astronauts are safely back on Earth.
Recovery teams had the crew out of the Dragon capsule and onto a recovery ship in less than an hour, in what NASA described as a standard landing and recovery process.
Pilot Mike Fincke exited first, followed by Commander Zena Cardman, JAXA astronaut Kimiya Yui, and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Platonov. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman confirmed all four crew members were safe and undergoing routine post-recovery medical checks.
Crew-11 spent 167 days in space — 165 of those aboard the International Space Station — completing about 140 scientific experiments.
Their mission ended about a month earlier than planned after teams began monitoring an undisclosed medical issue affecting one crew member.
NASA says that astronaut is stable, but due to medical privacy, no additional details are being released.
Deputy Associate Administrator Joel Montalbano said the agency executed the same landing and support procedures that would have been used for a planned late-February return.
Following splashdown, all four astronauts were transported to a local hospital for additional evaluation, taking advantage of medical resources on Earth.
After an overnight stay, the crew will return to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where they’ll reunite with family and begin standard post-flight reconditioning and evaluations.
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