Science Art: Crew-5’s Nighttime Splashdown, by NASA/Keegan Barber, 2023

Scientific illustration of a space capsule landing on water, photographed by NASA/Keegan Barber.
The SpaceX Dragon Endurance spacecraft is seen as it lands with NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Koichi Wakata, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina onboard in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Tampa, Florida, Saturday, March 11, 2023. Mann, Cassada, Wakata, and Kikina are returning after 157 days in space as part of Expedition 68 aboard the International Space Station. Photo Credit: (NASA/Keegan Barber).
Scientific illustration of a space capsule landing on water, photographed by NASA/Keegan Barber.

SpaceX Dragon Endurance returns to Earth on the night of March 11, 2023. Specifically, it’s just after 9:00 p.m. in the waters off Tampa, Florida.

As described in NASA’s image feature: “During the 156.5 days they spent aboard the International Space Station as part of Expedition 68, Crew-5 participated in several spacewalks to prepare the space station for solar arrays and conducted various experiments, including growing plants without soil and studying radiation exposure.” They also released Uganda’s and Zimbabwe’s first satellites and reinstalled a bioprinter that might be used to replicate whole human organs in near-zero-g.

You can read more about the mission, and see pictures of the crew — Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina, NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Koichi Wakata — over here, in NASA’s newsfeed.