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VIDEOS AT LINK.................... This is really cool. After a 9-month stay in space, Crew 9 returned in SpaceX's Dragon capsule. But it gets even cooler. As the astronauts touched down, a pod of curious dolphins swam up to greet the returning astronauts. SERIOUSLY, HOW COOL IS THIS? What an incredible moment. The astronauts then emerged, feeling full Earth gravity for the first time in almost a year. One of the most inspiring and heartwarming moments of the year. Surely this is a bipartisan moment everyone can celebrate, right? Eh, probably not.

NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, UAE astronaut Sultan Alneyadi, and cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev—the four members of NASA's SpaceX Crew-6 mission—are scheduled to splash down off the coast of Florida at 12:17 a.m. EDT (0417 UTC) on Monday, Sept. 4, concluding their six-month stay in low Earth orbit.

The quartet of newly minted citizen astronauts comprising the SpaceX Inspiration4 mission were due to splash down in the Atlantic off Florida on Saturday, completing a three-day flight of the first all-civilian crew ever launched into Earth orbit. To prepare for atmospheric re-entry and return to Earth, the SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle completed two rocket "burns" on Friday to lower its altitude and line up the capsule's trajectory with the targeted landing site. The Dragon capsule, dubbed Resilience, is scheduled to parachute into the sea around 7 p.m. Eastern time, shortly before sunset, according to SpaceX, the private rocketry company...

SpaceX's Crew-1 Dragon spacecraft, called Resilience, is scheduled to undock from the space station at 8:35 p.m. EDT (0035 GMT) after delays due to bad weather at its splashdown site on Earth. The spacecraft will return NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Mike Hopkins, Shannon Walker and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi home after six months in space. You can watch SpaceX's Crew-1 Dragon undocking here and on the Space.com homepage, courtesy of NASA TV. NASA's livestream will begin at 6 p.m. EDT (2200 GMT) and will continue until splashdown, which is scheduled for Sunday at 2:57 a.m. EDT (0657...

The U.S. Air Force and Navy rescued two Saudi pilots Friday after they ejected from their F-15 fighter over the Gulf of Aden during combat operations against Houthi rebels in Yemen. The Saudi jet apparently suffered some mechanical problem forcing the pilots to eject. A U.S. Air Force Pave Hawk special operations helicopter and crew were dispatched from Djibouti to rescue the Saudi pilots.

Japanese broadcaster NHK says North Korea has launched a missile as threatened with a report the second stage landed in the Pacific Ocean about 1,100 miles from Japan. North Korea had informed international authorities that it planned to launch a rocket sometime between Saturday and Wednesday to put a satellite into orbit. But the U.S., South Korea, Japan and others suspect it is a cover for testing a long-range missile for the North, which has nuclear weapons. Leaders from those countries had warned Pyongyang not to proceed with the planned rocket launch. Japanese government sources reported it appeared to be...