Five days after docking to the International Space Station, the first crew-capable spacecraft from the United States in 8 years has ended its inaugural mission, undocking from the ISS Friday morning ahead of a successful reentry and splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean off the northeast coast of Florida.
Undocking occurred at 02:31 EST (0731 UTC) with five hours of free-flight ahead of Crew Dragon’s deorbit burn at 07:53 EST (1253 UTC) and splashdown at 08:45 EST (1345 UTC).
With Dragon safely home, an immense amount of work will commence to analyze all of the data gathered during this test flight – a series of reviews that will lead to the critical In-Flight Abort test before culminating with the planned return of human launches to the United States with the Demo-2 mission of another SpaceX Crew Dragon later this year.