The Crew Dragon vehicle fired up its engines and safely plunged back through the Earth's thick atmosphere on Sunday afternoon before deploying parachutes and slowing the vehicle down for its target landing off the coast of Florida. Their mission to the International Space Station marked the first crewed spaceflight to launch from the United States since the Space Shuttle program retired in 2011. It was also the first time in history that a commercially developed spacecraft carried humans into Earth's orbit.
Mission control dispatched a humorous welcome to the astronauts: "Thank you for flying SpaceX."
Hurley and Behnken made their first post-splashdown public appearance after they were shuttled by helicopter, then airplane, to Houston, Texas, where the astronauts greeted their families.
The men sat to address the public during a media event streamed on NASA TV: "We're not gonna stand right now," Hurley told an audience at a landing strip near Johnson Space Center.
"For those of you who have done this before," he said, referring to the arduous trip home from space, "you know, it's not pleasant standing for a few hours after you get back."
Behnken also thanked the leaders of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, including Kathy Lueders, the longtime program head who was recently promoted to NASA's head of human spaceflight. He also thanked SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who flew into Houston to greet the astronauts after watching their return to Earth from SpaceX's mission control in Hawthorne, California.
A visibly emotional Musk later remarked, "this is the result of an incredible, incredible amount of work from people at SpaceX, people at NASA," Musk said.
"This has been 18 years to, to finally fly," he said, referring to the 18 years of SpaceX's operation, during which it has flown dozens of satellites to orbit, but never humans.
The successful return of two NASA astronauts aboard a SpaceX capsule marked the culmination of a decade-long, and occasionally contentious, partnership between the space agency and Musk's hard-charging rocket company.
NASA tapped SpaceX and Boeing in 2014 to build vehicles capable of ferrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station. The two companies were awarded fixed-price contracts worth $2.6 billion and $4.2 billion respectively, and both spacecraft were years overdue. But SpaceX beat Boeing to the launch pad.
SpaceX's Crew Dragon was cleared for flight in May, and Behnken and Hurley took off aboard their spacecraft, nicknamed Dragon Endeavour, as millions watched. The pair spent two months aboard the space station before beginning their return trip home Saturday.
Their return trip was made more dramatic by a two-day standoff with mother nature: Tropical Storm Isaias was barreling toward the east coast. But waters in the Gulf of Mexico remained calm enough for the astronauts' capsule to splash down near Pensacola.
A herd of unidentified boats that could be seen swarming around Crew Dragon shortly after splash
