US astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, who flew to the International Space Station in SpaceX's new Crew Dragon, have splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico.
The pair return after a two-month voyage that was NASA's first crewed mission from home soil in nine years.
Mr Behnken and Mr Hurley left the station on Saturday and returned home to land in the waves off Florida's Pensacola coast on schedule following a 21-hour overnight journey aboard Crew Dragon "Endeavour."
The successful splashdown was a final key test of whether Elon Musk's spacecraft can transport astronauts to and from orbit - a feat no private company has ever accomplished before.
"On behalf of the SpaceX and NASA teams, welcome back to Planet Earth. Thanks for flying SpaceX," SpaceX mission control said upon splashdown.
For the return sequence, on-board thrusters and two sets of parachutes worked autonomously to slow the acorn-shaped capsule, bringing Behnken and Hurley's speed of 28,000kph in orbit down to 560kph upon atmospheric re-entry, and eventually 25kph at splashdown.
During re-entry to Earth's atmosphere, the capsule's outer shell withstood temperatures as high as 1,927 degrees while Mr Behnken and Mr Hurley, wearing SpaceX's white flight suits strapped inside the cabin, experienced 30 degrees.
The crew floated inside the capsule before joint recovery teams from SpaceX and NASA retrieved them for a helicopter trip ashore.
The duo will undergo medical checks ahead of a flight to NASA's Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas.
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk's SpaceX became the first private company to send humans to orbit with the launch of Mr Behnken and Mr Hurley, who will have spent more than two months on the space station upon returning.
The landmark mission, launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Centre on May 31, marked the first time the US space agency launched humans from American soil since its shuttle program retired in 2011.
Since then the United States has relied on Russia's space program to launch its astronauts to the space station.
Mr Behnken and Mr Hurley's homecoming was also the first crewed splashdown in an American capsule in 45 years.
