It looked like the final scene of a movie, the denouement of a long adventure in which the good guys finally prevail. Azure skies and brilliant blue seas provided a perfect backdrop on Tuesday evening as a spacecraft carrying four people neared the planet’s surface.
“Just breathtaking views of a calm, glass-like ocean off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida,” commented Sandra Jones, a NASA spokesperson, during the webcast co-hosted by the space agency and SpaceX, whose Dragon vehicle returned the four astronauts from orbit.
A drone near the landing site captured incredible images of Crew Dragon Freedom as it slowly descended beneath four parachutes. Most of NASA’s astronauts today, outside of the small community of spaceflight devotees, are relatively anonymous. But not two of the passengers inside Freedom, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. After nine months of travails, 286 days to be precise, they were finally coming home.