Space station crew returns to Earth with perfect splashdown

Crew 12 dropped out of orbit and returned to Earth on Thursday, one day after undocking from the International Space Station, in a meteor-like fireball of concentrated reentry heat, safely splashing down in the Pacific Ocean west of Los Angeles to close out a 237-day mission.

Commander Jessica Meir, pilot Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev enjoyed a final day in weightlessness while waiting for their orbit to line up with the southwest-to-northeast reentry trajectory.

Right on cue, their Crew Dragon capsule "Freedom" executed a nine-minute thruster firing starting at 10:46 a.m. ET Thursday, slowing the ship just enough to drop it out of orbit.

Thirty-six minutes later, still moving at nearly 5 miles per second, the spacecraft slammed back into the discernible atmosphere, rapidly decelerating in a blaze of atmospheric friction.

Eleven minutes after that, now descending at a sharply reduced 120 mph, the Crew Dragon's main parachutes unfurled and inflated, lowering the ship to a relatively gentle 15-mph splashdown at 11:34 a.m. ET, about 50 miles west of Los Angeles

A SpaceX team quickly moved in to stabilize the spacecraft, which was hauled aboard the company's recovery ship Shannon shortly after splashdown.

Flight surgeons were standing by to give the crew members initial medical checks as they began their re-adjustment to the unfamiliar tug of gravity. All four appeared in good spirits as they were helped out of the capsule and rolled inside the ship on reclining chairs. They were to be flown ashore by helicopter before continuing on to the Johnson Space Center in Houston for debriefing and physical therapy.

"I think the thing that I'm looking forward to most is seeing my 3 1/2-year-old daughter," Meir said earlier. "Of course, our loved ones are the things that we miss the most."

After family, she added, "I'm so looking forward to seeing nature again, feeling the breeze on my face, the wind rustling through the leaves, experiencing all those things that we don't have up here. But I will very, very much miss being weightless all the time and the incredible views that we have."

"Going home and being able to take a nice long hot shower will be very relaxing and very nice," Hathaway said. "And of course, I'm looking forward to seeing my family. But a hot shower is near the top of my list."

Meir and company blasted off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station atop a Falcon 9 rocket on Feb. 13.

After replacing four other Crew Dragon fliers, the fresh crew settled in for an eight-month stay in space, joining a three-man Soyuz crew. Over the course of their mission, Crew 12 sailed through 3,792 orbits spanning nearly 101 million miles, carried out four spacewalks and welcomed a fresh Soyuz crew in July and their own replacements earlier this month.

And as with all space station flights, Crew 12 carried out station maintenance and, most important to NASA, operated scores of experiments and research projects for scientists on the ground.

"Looking down at the ocean, oh, there are so many amazing things that you see," Meir said.