On Saturday, May 30, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launched Crew Dragon’s second demonstration (Demo-2) mission from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and today NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley aboard the Dragon spacecraft returned human spaceflight to the United States. SpaceX and NASA undocked Saturday, August 1 for Crew Dragon from the Space Station, with the two astronauts aboard the spacecraft, and returned to Earth.
Dragon splashed down at a targeted water landing site off the coast of Florida at about 2:42 p.m. EDT on Sunday, August 2. The Demo-2 mission is the final major milestone for SpaceX’s human spaceflight system to be certified by NASA for operational crew missions to and from the International Space Station.
Once the Demo-2 mission is complete, and the SpaceX and NASA teams have reviewed all the data for certification, NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Mike Hopkins, Shannon Walker, and JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi will fly on Dragon’s first six-month operational mission (Crew-1) targeted for late September.