Dolphins welcome SpaceX’s Crew-9 astronauts home after splashdown (video)


SpaceX’s Crew-9 astronauts had some company in the water after they splashed down on Tuesday afternoon (March 18).

The Crew-9 mission returned to Earth at 5:57 p.m. EDT (2157 GMT) on Tuesday, splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida. A fleet of recovery vessels soon converged on Crew-9’s Dragon capsule, named Freedom — and so did some curious marine mammals, who wanted to check out this strange object that fell from the sky into their domain.

“Wow! We got a cute little pod of dolphins, not just one or two,” SpaceX engineer Kate Tice said during the NASA-SpaceX webcast of Crew-9’s entry, descent and landing.

overhead show of a white space capsule floating in the ocean with two dolphins swimming nearby

Dolphins swim near the SpaceX Crew-9 capsule Freedom shortly after it splashed down on March 18, 2025. The person on Freedom’s outside is a member of the SpaceX recovery team. (Image credit: NASA)

Freedom carried four people — NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore and Aleksandr Gorbunov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos — home from the International Space Station (ISS).




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