The unmanned Crew Dragon space capsule on Friday successfully concluded a six-day return trip to the International Space Station, splashing down near Cape Canaveral in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of the US state of Florida at 1345 UTC (8:45 a.m. Eastern Time).

.@SpaceX’s #CrewDragon returned to Earth with a splash in the Atlantic Ocean off Florida’s eastern shore at 8:45am ET, completing an end-to-end flight test to the @Space_Station and back as part of our @Commercial_Crew Program. Learn more: https://t.co/MFB7dVb60c pic.twitter.com/8lFL6X3Tue

— NASA (@NASA) March 8, 2019

Parachutes were deployed to slow the capsule's descent into the sea. 

The '"Demo-1" was the first private mission to the ISS, and the first time a space vessel capable of carrying humans had been launched from US soil in eight years.

The landing had been seen as the most difficult part of the trip, with the capsule passing quickly through Earth's atmosphere engulfed in flames before having its descent slowed by parachutes.

Manned mission to come

The capsule, which reached the ISS on Sunday, undocked from the station at 0732 UTC Friday while over Sudan.

The flight, whose only passenger was a test dummy called Ripley, was a test ahead of a mission with a person on board scheduled for July.

The SpaceX project was undertaken together with the US aerospace organization NASA, which currently relies on the Russian space program and its Soyuz spacecraft to shuttle astronauts to the ISS research facility.

The company was founded in 2002 by South African entrepreneur Elon Musk with the goal of reducing space transportation costs and working toward colonizing Mars.