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NASA’s Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron, and the European Space Agency’s Matthias Maurer, embraced the seven astronauts remaining at the station, before parting ways.
“It’s the end of a six-month mission, but I think the space dream lives on,” Maurer said.
SpaceX brought up their U.S. and Italian replacements last week, after completing a charter trip to the station for a trio of businessmen.
That amounts to two crew launches and two splashdowns in barely a month.
Watch: 4 astronauts returning to Earth from Space Station
A SpaceX Dragon capsule with four astronauts on board has left the International Space Station and is returning to Earth. NASA Astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron along with European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer have been in orbit for six months. NASA and SpaceX say the Dragon capsule separated from the Space Station at 1:20 a.m. Eastern Time (0520 GMT) over Australia.
Musk’s company has now launched 26 people into orbit in less than two years, since it started ferrying astronauts for NASA. Eight of those 26 were space tourists.
The newly returned astronauts said their mission was highlighted by the three visitors and their ex-astronaut escort who dropped by in April, opening up NASA’s side of the station to paying guests after decades of resistance.
On the down side, they had to contend with a dangerous spike in space junk after Russia blew up a satellite in a missile test in mid-November.
More than 1,500 pieces of shrapnel spread across Earth’s orbit for years to come.
While the war in Ukraine has caused tensions between the U.S. and Russia, the astronauts have stood by their Russian crewmates, and vice versa.
Flight controllers in Houston and Moscow also continued to cooperate as always, according to NASA officials.
As he relinquished command of the space station earlier this week, Marshburn called it “a place of peace” and said international cooperation would likely be its lasting legacy.
Russian Oleg Artemyev, the new commander, also emphasised the “peace between our countries, our friendship” in orbit and described his crewmates as brothers and sisters.
Up there now are three Russians, three Americans and one Italian.
It was Marshburn’s third spaceflight, and the first for the three returning with him.
Chari and Barron’s next stop could be the moon; they are among 18 U.S. astronauts picked for NASA’s Artemis moon-landing programme. Two others in that elite group are now at the space station.
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