ISTANBUL

Four astronauts, who spent six months at the International Space Station, have landed safely back on Earth in a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida.

“NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, as well as UAE (United Arab Emirates) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev, returned to Earth at 12:17 a.m. EDT,” a NASA statement said.

The astronauts were members of the Crew-6 mission run jointly by NASA and SpaceX.

“Teams aboard SpaceX recovery vessels retrieved the spacecraft and its crew. After returning to shore, the crew will fly to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston,” the statement said.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said that the mission, logging nearly 79 million miles (127 million kilometers) during their mission, completed “hundreds of scientific experiments for the benefit of all humanity.”