The spacecraft left the space station at 5:05 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time, starting its 5-hour journey home. It splashed down in the Pacific Ocean at about 10:41 a.m., approximately 200 miles (320 kilometers) southwest of Long Beach, California, according to U.S. space agency NASA. A recovery ship is expected to retrieve the capsule from the sea.
SpaceX, NASA's cargo provider, launched the spacecraft on Dec. 5 in 2019 in a resupply mission to the ISS.
The spacecraft carried over 1,600 kg of experimental materials and other cargo back from the space station. Among them is a faulty battery charge-discharge unit, which failed to activate following an installation of new lithium-ion batteries on the space station's truss in October 2019.
Another experiment back home is a test examining the effects of spaceflight on tiny aquatic animals, called rotifers, which are found highly resistant to radiation on Earth. Also, results of how a naturally occurring protein deal with radiation during long-duration spaceflight missions have been returned.
Dragon does not burn up on reentry and so is best suited to ferrying material that needs examination, not disposal.