Four astronauts returned to Earth on Monday, riding home with SpaceX to end a 200-day space station mission that began last spring.
Their capsule parachuted into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola, Florida, in darkness. Recovery boats quickly moved in with spotlights.
Their homecoming - coming just eight hours after leaving the International Space Station - paved the way for SpaceX's launch of their four replacements as early as Wednesday night.
The newcomers were scheduled to launch first, but NASA switched the order because of bad weather and an astronaut's undisclosed medical condition. The welcoming duties will now fall to the lone American and two Russians left behind at the space station.
Before Monday afternoon’s undocking, German astronaut Matthias Maurer, who’s waiting to launch at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, tweeted it was a shame the two crews wouldn’t overlap at the space station but “we trust you’ll leave everything nice and tidy.” His will be SpaceX's fourth crew flight for NASA in just one-and-a-half years.
NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Japan's Akihiko Hoshide and France's Thomas Pesquet should have been back on Monday morning, but high wind in the recovery zone delayed their return.
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