Four astronauts returned to Earth in a SpaceX capsule Friday, ending their nearly six-month space station mission with a splashdown in the Atlantic off Florida.

Wet and windy weather across Florida delayed their homecoming. SpaceX and NASA finally gave the all-clear on Friday, and the three Americans and one Italian departed the International Space Station, their residence since April.

The capsule parachuted into the ocean, just off Jacksonville, Florida, about five hours later.

Mission engineers will track NASA's Lucy spacecraft nonstop as it prepares to swoop near Earth on Oct. 16 to use this planet's gravity to set itself on a course toward the Jupiter Trojan asteroids.

But they also will be closely tracking something else: more than 47,000 satellites, debris, and other objects circling our planet. A greater than 1-10,000 chance that Lucy will collide with one of these objects will require mission engineers to slightly adjust the spacecraft's trajectory.

Although an adjustment is unlikely, and collisions are rare, the chances are increasing as the number of objects in Earth's orbit grows, NASA experts say.

The International Space Station, for instance, has maneuvered out of the way of space debris 31 times since 1999, including three times since 2020.

"Low-Earth orbit is getting more crowded, so that has to be part of the consideration nowadays, especially for missions that fly low, like Lucy," said Dr.

The construction of large structures such as space stations, space solar power stations, and space telescopes is one of the main development trends for space exploration in the future.