Watch astronauts splash down to Earth safely aboard SpaceX Crew Dragon

SpaceX's Crew Dragon Resilience.
(Image credit: Bill Ingalls/NASA via AP)

SpaceX's Crew Dragon Resilience, carrying four astronauts back to Earth from the International Space Station, splashed down safely just before 3 a.m. ET on Sunday morning off the coast of Panama City, Florida. It was the first nighttime splashdown for NASA astronauts since the return of Apollo 8 in 1968.

With their landing the crew successfully completed the first round-trip operational mission for NASA led by a private company. "I'd just like to say quite frankly, you all are changing the world," Hopkins said as SpaceX personnel prepared to open the side hatch of the capsule.

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SpaceX and NASA now have regularly scheduled human shuttles to and from space, The Wall Street Journal notes. Read more at The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.