Four astronauts returned safely to Earth from the International Space Station early on Sunday in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, parachuting to splash-down in the Gulf of Mexico, NASA said.
Their return marked the end of the first crew rotation mission to the station by the Crew Dragon spacecraft, developed in partnership between NASA and Elon Musk's rocket company SpaceX, the agency said in a statement.
The crew - NASA's Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, and Japan's Soichi Noguchi - had launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on November 15, propelled by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The capsule, dubbed Resilience by the crew, splashed down in darkness off the coast of Panama City, Florida.
The mission was part of NASA's fledgling public-private partnership with SpaceX, the rocket company founded in 2002 by Musk, who is also CEO of electric car maker Tesla Inc.
At least four people died, including a four-month-old baby, and scores were injured in Oklahoma this weekend after dozens of twisters swept the US Southern Plains, while weather alerts on Sunday put more than 7 million Americans under tornado warnings.
Pope Francis offered encouragement to prisoners, artists and young people in Venice on Sunday, with his first trip of the year testing his mobility and resilience after a number of health scares in recent months.
Disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein was taken to hospital in poor health his lawyer confirmed, just days after his 2020 conviction in New York was overturned.
A gold pocket watch, which was recovered from the body of the richest man on the Titanic, has sold for over 4.1m dirham at auction, along with other items recovered from the sunken ship.
An Arab ministerial coordination meeting in Riyadh emphasised the necessity of ending the conflict on the Gaza Strip and the lifting of all restrictions that hinder the entry of humanitarian aid.