SpaceX has brought four astronauts home with a midnight splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, capping the busiest month yet for Elon Musk's space taxi service.
The three US astronauts and one German transported back to Earth in the capsule were bobbing off the Florida coast, near Tampa, less than 24 hours after leaving the International Space Station.
US space agency Nasa expects to have them back in Houston later on Friday.
Nasa's Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron, and the European Space Agency's Matthias Maurer, embraced the seven astronauts remaining at the station, before parting ways.
Mr Maurer said: "It's the end of a six-month mission, but I think the space dream lives on."
SpaceX brought up their US and Italian replacements last week, after completing a charter trip to the station for a trio of businessmen.
That amounts to two crew launches and two splashdowns in barely a month.
Mr Musk's company has now launched 26 people into orbit in less than two years, since it started ferrying astronauts for Nasa. Eight of those 26 were space tourists.
"Welcome home," SpaceX Mission Control radioed at splashdown. "Thanks for flying SpaceX."
"That was a great ride," replied Mr Chari, the capsule commander. As for the reintroduction to gravity, he noted: "Only one complaint. These water bottles are super-heavy."
All four were out of the capsule an hour later, waving and giving thumbs-up as they were taken away for medical checks.
The astronauts said their mission was highlighted by the three visitors and their ex-astronaut escort who dropped by in April, opening up Nasa's side of the station to paying guests after decades of resistance.
On the down side, they had to contend with a dangerous spike in space debris after Russia blew up a satellite in a missile test in mid-November.
More than 1,500 pieces of shrapnel will spread across Earth's orbit for years to come.
While the war in Ukraine has caused tensions between the US and Russia, the astronauts have stood by their Russian crewmates, and vice versa.
Flight controllers in Houston and Moscow also continued to cooperate as always, according to Nasa officials.
As he relinquished command of the space station earlier this week, Mr Marshburn called it "a place of peace" and said international cooperation would likely be its lasting legacy.
Russian Oleg Artemyev, the new commander, also emphasised the "peace between our countries, our friendship" in orbit and described his crewmates as brothers and sisters.
The space station is now crewed by three Russians, three Americans and one Italian.
It was Mr Marshburn's third spaceflight, and the first for the three returning with him.
Mr Chari and Ms Barron's next stop could be the moon; they are among 18 US astronauts selected for Nasa's Artemis moon-landing programme.
Two others in that elite group are now at the space station.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here