The Atlantic

‘Thanks for Flying SpaceX’

After a successful splashdown, SpaceX is poised to take over the job of shuttling American astronauts to space.
Source: Bill Ingalls / NASA via AP

In recent years, as SpaceX launched rocket after rocket without incident, liftoff became the company’s second-most-impressive feat. The truly dazzling moment came after the rocket had left the ground, and its booster—or, sometimes, two boosters—reversed course high up in the air, flipped around, and glided back down, landing upright on the ground or a barge floating in the Atlantic Ocean, ready to be refurbished and used again. What once seemed like science fiction has become a SpaceX signature.

From now on, SpaceX has claim to another enduring image of the new era in spaceflight: a quartet of parachutes in the sky over open water, with a capsule dangling below, delivering passengers safely home from space.

This is how two NASA astronauts returned to Earth yesterday afternoon after spending more than two months on the International Space Station. The SpaceX Dragon capsule splashed down in still waters in the Gulf of Mexico, just off the coast of Florida. Its passengers, Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, bobbed inside the capsule—which was so charred from the fiery fall through the atmosphere that it looked more like a toasted marshmallow—until recovery ships arrived and tugged them to safety.

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