After around six months on board the International Space Station ISS, two Americans, one Russian and one Japanese are back on earth. On board a "Crew Dragon" from Elon Musk's private space company SpaceX, the four astronauts landed in the sea off the coast of the US state of Florida today, as shown by live images from the US space agency Nasa.

Around 20 hours earlier, the "Crew-5" - consisting of NASA astronaut Nicole Aunapu Mann and her NASA colleague Josh Cassada as well as the Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata and the Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina - had undocked from the ISS. The undocking had previously been postponed several times due to the weather.

The "Crew-5" was launched in October from the Cape Canaveral spaceport - the first joint launch of NASA astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut from American soil since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine.

Further on board the ISS are the Russian cosmonauts Sergei Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin as well as Nasa astronaut Frank Rubio and the "Crew-6", which just arrived a few days ago and consists of the Americans Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg, the Russian Andrei Fedyaev and the Emirati Sultan al-Nijadi.