SpaceX caps an incredibly busy month with a NASA crew landing Friday morning

Four astronauts returned to Earth early Friday morning after a long spaceflight.

The astronauts left the International Space Station on Thursday before lining up Endurance.

When Endurance splashed down at 12:43 am on Friday, the seas were fair. The crew of the recovery ship, named Shannon, climbed out of the craft less than an hour after landing. They boarded a helicopter and flew to Houston for family reunions.

The commander, Chari, said that it performed admirably on the flight to and from the space station. That was a great ride.

The crew performed hundreds of science experiments while on the station, such as testing cotton plants for resistance to the effects of climate change. They brought some of the experiments back with them.

The completion of the fourth crewed spaceflight for NASA by the company marked the end of the era of private spaceflights. Four astronauts are currently living on the station after the Crew-4 mission launched for NASA on April 27.

In less than two years since its debut as a human spaceflight vehicle, Crew Dragon has flown more astronauts into space and back than any other NASA vehicle. 45 astronauts are in the Apollo capsule. The tally of more than 800 astronauts over the course of three decades is not likely to be reached until the much larger Starship vehicle comes online.

The last month has been busy for the company. The private mission was launched on April 8 and landed on April 25. On April 27th, the Crew-4 mission for NASA was launched. On Friday morning, the teams saw the Crew-3 flight land.

"If you just look at all this work in the last month, you know, I really want to personally thank SpaceX for performing such seamless operations on all those missions." said Kathy Lueders, chief of human spaceflight operations at NASA. Beautiful landings. I would like to express my thanks to the Commercial Crew teams that spent long hours working through issues and facilitating a lot of on-orbit and ground operations.

Two Starlink satellite missions and a classified satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office were launched by the company. The Starlink launch is planned for Friday morning at 5:42 am, five hours after the Crew-3 landing.

Is this too much for the company to handle in a safe way? NASA officials say that there are enough people to handle all of the work. Steve Stich, who manages the Commercial Crew Program for NASA, said that the amount of work that is automated by the company is different than what other companies do.

The last month has been a special time for the company, according to William Gerstenmaier, vice president of build and flight reliability. He said that different groups of people at the company are focused on different projects, and they have been able to keep their focus.

The results seem to support that.