NASA astronauts head home aboard SpaceX capsule
Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley's journey will cap a two-month voyage in space that marked NASA's first crewed mission from home soil in nine years.
Crew Dragon "Endeavour" decoupled from the orbital station at 7:35 p.m. ET carrying the U.S. astronauts ahead of a Sunday afternoon splashdown off the coast of Pensacola, Florida - the first procedure of its kind in a privately built space capsule.
NASA and SpaceX - monitoring the crew's return from Houston, Texas and SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne, California - ruled out splashdown options in the Atlantic earlier this week due to Tropical Storm Isaias, a cyclone expected to churn alongside Florida's east coast as a hurricane in the coming days.
Upon a successful splashdown at 2:48 p.m. ET Sunday, the spacecraft will have completed its final key test to prove it can transport astronauts to and from space - a task SpaceX has accomplished dozens of times with its cargo-only capsule but never before with humans aboard.
