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The fourth long-duration astronaut team launched by SpaceX to the International Space Station (ISS) safely returned to Earth on Friday, splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean off Florida after nearly six months of research aboard the orbital outpost.

The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule dubbed Freedom, carrying three US NASA astronauts and an Italian crew mate from the European Space Agency, parachuted into the sea at the conclusion of a five-hour autonomous flight home from the ISS.The Freedom crew, which began their stay in orbit on April 27, consisted of Americans Kjell Lindgren, 49, Jessica Watkins, 34, and Bob Hines, 47, as well as Italy’s Samantha Cristoferetti, 45, who was commander of their ISS expedition.

Splashdown-recovery teams were expected to take at least an hour to reach the capsule bobbing in the water, hoist it onto the deck of a retrieval vessel and let the astronauts out for their first breath of fresh air in more than 24 weeks.The return from orbit followed a fiery re-entry plunge through Earth’s atmosphere generating frictional heat that sent temperatures outside the capsule soaring to 1 930 degrees Celsius.

Applause from the SpaceX flight control center in suburban Los Angeles was heard over the webcast. During their 170 days aboard the space station, the crew orbited Earth 2 720 times – about once every 90 minutes – to log some 116 million km in space, according to NASA. Their exit came a week after their replacement team, Crew-5, arrived aboard the station – a Russian cosmonaut, a Japanese astronaut and two NASA crew mates, including the first Native American woman sent to orbit.

 

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