Two NASA astronauts, a Japanese flier and a Russian cosmonaut plunged back to Earth on Saturday, safely splashing down in the Pacific Ocean, west of San Diego, to wrap up a five-month mission to space.

Strapped into SpaceX's Crew Dragon Endurance, commander Anne McClain, pilot Nichole Ayers, Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi and cosmonaut Kirill Peskov gently splashed down at 11:33 a.m. EDT, 17-and-a-half hours after undocking from the International Space Station .

A helicopter view of the Crew Dragon Endurance, still 2,600 feet up, descending toward splashdown Saturday off the coast of Southern California near San Diego. SpaceX

SpaceX support crews deployed near the landing site quickly converged on the capsule to rig the craft for a lift onto the deck of a recovery ship.

After h

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