SpaceX Dragon Capsule Safely Landed in Pacific Ocean Today

The safe return to Earth of the SpaceX Dragon capsule was accompanied by live tweets of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who reported that a recovery ship in the Pacific Ocean had obtained the capsule after a three-week mission at the International Space Station.

"Recovery ship has secured Dragon. Powering down all secondary systems. Cargo looks A ok," said Musk in a Tweet at 1:00 p.m. EST.

Musk made the return mission a live event that could be followed on the SpaceX feed and a website. The return was delayed by one day due to unfavorably high seas at the recovery point off the Baja Peninsula yesterday, and would have been pushed back to April 1 if conditions had been still unsuitable for return today.

The Dragon capsule brought back 1,330 kilogram of cargo from the ISS, which includes microgravity experiments that look into the effects of low gravity on the growth of plant seedlings, changes in the human body, or how it affects the behavior of semiconductors and detergents.

Another experiment on board of the returned Dragon capsule is an advanced cooling system called the GLACIER freezer, which contains samples that have been in cold storage at the ISS since the previous Dragon mission was there in October of last year; a previous GLACIER freezer lost power due to water intrusion when the Dragon splashed down last year, according to a NASA report.

Splashdown occurred on schedule on Tuesday, 12:34 p.m. EST (9:34 a.m. PST).

"SPLASHDOWN! At 9:34am PT, #Dragon splashed down safely in the Pacific. Welcome home!" tweeted the official SpaceX account.

The Dragon capsule was launched into orbit by a Falcon 9 rocket on March 1, docking with the ISS on March 3 after a day's delay due to thruster problems that could fortunately be solved.

The crane-equipped barge that recovered the capsule will return to the Port of Los Angeles, where Dragon will be loaded onto a truck to be hauled to SpaceX's facility in McGregor, Texas.