After almost 186 days in space, SpaceX Crew Dragon and Crew-6 NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, Rocosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, and UAE (United Arab Emirates) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi returned to Earth and splashed down off the coast of Florida at 12:17 a.m. on 4 September 2023.

The images below show the Dragon spacecraft blazing across the sky as it reenters the atmosphere. The spacecraft’s heat shield protecting the four astronauts from temperatures as high as 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit as the spacecraft slows from an orbital speed of 17,000 MPH in preparation for a gentle parachute splashdown in the waters off of Jacksonville, Florida.

Falcon 9 launched Dragon and Crew-6 to the orbiting laboratory on Thursday, 2 March 2023 at 12:34 a.m. from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.