Four astronauts are back on Earth after a five-month stay at the International Space Station. Their SpaceX capsule parachuted into the Pacific off the Southern California coast on Saturday, a day after departing the orbiting lab. Splashing down were two Americans, one Japanese and one Russian. They launched in March as the replacements for NASA’s stuck astronauts. Boeing’s botched Starliner demo kept the two test pilots at the space station for more than nine months instead of a week. This was SpaceX’s third Pacific splashdown with people on board, but the first for a NASA crew in 50 years.
