SpaceX Dragon Ship Wraps Up Second Mission To The International Space Station, Returns To Earth With A Splash

Once the cargo ship made it back to Earth, SpaceX teams rushed to tow it to port in southern California. This was the company's first nighttime splashdown and recovery of a Dragon capsule, NASA noted in the blog post.

After launching to the ISS with 5,600 pounds of supplies and science gear, Dragon did not come home empty-handed. The spacecraft brought home about two tons of cargo and scientific experiments, SpaceX wrote in a CRS-16 mission update.

"The commercial cargo vessel is taking home a variety of critical space research that will immediately be picked up by NASA engineers and distributed to scientists across the nation," stated NASA officials. "Station hardware will also be extracted for analysis, refurbishment or discarding."

According to SpaceX, this was the second mission to the ISS for this particular Dragon capsule. The same spacecraft launched to the space station in February 2017, during the company's 10th resupply mission (CRS-10) to the astronauts on board the orbiting laboratory.

Emergency Drill For The Astronaut Crew

With the Dragon spacecraft safely back on Earth, the crew of the ISS resumed their regular science and maintenance activities. The astronauts started Tuesday with a simulated emergency exercise, then moved on their assigned tasks for today, NASA detailed in a new blog post.

"The unlikely emergency scenarios the crew trains for include events such as depressurization, ammonia leaks, and fires," noted space agency officials.

"Responses include quickly donning safety gear, closing a module hatch to isolate pressure and ammonia leaks, extinguishing a fire, and evacuating the station aboard the Soyuz crew ship."