The company Sunday carried out the first water landing of an American crew in the dark since the landing of " Apollo 8"
SpaceX returned four astronauts from the International Space Station on Sunday, making it the first American crew to make a water landing in the dark since the Apollo 8 landing".
The Dragon capsule parachuted into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Panama City, Florida, shortly before 3 a.m., ending Elon Musk's second SpaceX astronaut flight.
The journey took only 6 and a half hours. The astronauts, three Americans, and one Japanese returned in the same capsule - called "resilient" - that had been launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center last November toward the International Space Station.
Their 167-day mission was the longest for astronauts from the United States, breaking the previous record of 84 days set by NASA's last Skylab crew in 1974.
The capsule's separation on Saturday evening left seven people on the space station, four of whom arrived a week ago via SpaceX as well.
NASA astronaut Victor Glover tweeted after leaving the station, writing: "on our way to Earth. One step closer to family and home!".
Glover - along with NASA's Mike Hopkins, Shannon Walker, and Japanese sushi Noguchi - was supposed to return to Earth last Wednesday, but high sea winds forced SpaceX to halt two landing attempts during the day. Finally, a rare landing in the Dark was chosen to take advantage of the calm weather.
SpaceX trained to return at night and even retrieved the station's newest cargo capsule from the waters of the Gulf of Mexico in the dark. Infrared cameras tracked the capsule as it re-entered the atmosphere, which looked like a bright star penetrating the night sky.
All four main parachutes could be seen opening just before landing, in infrared.