Fast boats were dispatched to recover the four people from their stricken capsule, which was bobbing in the sea. Three nautical miles away, the recovery team was waiting. The rescue crews were given permission to approach the capsule at 10:38 p.m.
“We were on the helipad watching the crew members streak through the atmosphere, and it looked like a meteor - it was truly incredible,” said Leah Cheshier, a NASA spokesman.
“We couldn't ask for better conditions and things are moving really smoothly here and happening as planned.” WATCH: 2004 SNL SKETCH: "DONALD TRUMP’S HOUSE OF WINGS”
The side hatch was opened at 11:14 p.m. ET, and the crew disembarked. The captain, Megan McArthur, was the first to leave, at 11:26 p.m. ET. Commander Shane Kimbrough trailed her out of the capsule, beaming as he was carried out and placed on a stretcher to be transported away. He made a V for Victory sign and waved to the cameras.
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By 11:33 p.m., all four had emerged from the capsule, beaming and fist-bumping. Their return was scheduled for Sunday afternoon, but heavy winds caused the voyage to be postponed by a day.
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Due to a poor toilet design, the SpaceX spaceship Endeavour was without a bathroom, requiring the crew to wear diapers during the return voyage to Earth.
However, due to the path from the ship to Earth, the rescheduled mission cut the trip from space by 12 hours - it was just eight hours long instead of the projected 20 hours - and the team did not have to wear the protective underwear for as long as previously expected.
“Bittersweet feeling to leave ... a magical place in the sky that grants superpowers like floating and seeing [Earth] at a glance,” Pesquet tweeted Monday morning.
“It gives me hope that humans can achieve anything, with good intentions, when we want to.”
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At 12:13 p.m. ET on Monday, the hatches on Endeavour closed with the astronauts inside, and less than two hours later, the crew performed a sequence of brief burns to push away from the ISS. As it parachuted into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida, Endeavour was right on time.
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This is the third crew to be carried into orbit as part of NASA's budding public-private relationship with SpaceX, the rocket business founded by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk in 2002.
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Since restarting human spaceflights from American soil last year, the returning team has been dubbed 'Crew 2' since it is the second operational space station team that NASA has sent on a SpaceX capsule.
Previously, after the conclusion of the US space shuttle program in 2011, there was a nine-year gap. The four performed a spin around the ISS to take images before leaving the space station's orbit.
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Before their retirement a decade ago, NASA's shuttles used to do it all the time to enable for a closer examination of the ISS's aging structure and the determination of whether maintenance is required.
This was, however, the first time SpaceX attempted a fly around of this magnitude. The Crew-3 mission will launch on November 10 from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, less than 48 hours after Crew-2 departs the ISS. Temperatures around the outside of the spacecraft can reach 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit due to frictional heat generated when the capsule plunges into the atmosphere.
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