Ax-3 Mission Crew Returns To Earth Aboard SpaceX Dragon: Splashdown

SpaceX Ax-3 Crew Dragon Freedom splashed down off the coast of Daytona Beach, Florida under four main parachutes at about 1330 UTC. A SpaceX recovery team swiftly reached the capsule to begin extracting its Axiom Space's four crewmembers -- Commander Michael López-Alegría, a former NASA spaceflyer who's now Axiom Space's chief astronaut; pilot Walter Villadei, a colonel in the Italian Air Force; mission specialist Alper Gezeravcı, the first citizen of Turkey ever to reach space; and mission specialist Marcus Wandt, an European Space Agency reserve astronaut. Freedom undocked from the ISS on Wednesday (Feb. 7) at 1420 UTC, ending Ax-3 three-week mission to the orbiting lab