splashdown
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- Water landings of spacecraft
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12 sectionsContents
- History
- Disadvantages
- Launch vehicles
- List of spacecraft splashdowns
- Crewed spacecraft
- Uncrewed spacecraft
- Gallery
- See also
- Notes
- References
- Bibliography
- External links
thumb|Apollo 15 makes contact with the Pacific Ocean. thumb|Locations of Atlantic Ocean splashdowns of American spacecraft prior to the 21st century thumb|Locations of Pacific Ocean splashdowns of American spacecraft
Splashdown is the method of landing a spacecraft or launch vehicle in a body of water, usually by parachute. This has been the primary recovery method of American capsules including NASA's Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Orion along with the private SpaceX Dragon. It is also possible for the Boeing Starliner, Russian Soyuz, and the Chinese Shenzhou crewed capsules to land in water in case of contingency. NASA recovered the Space Shuttle solid rocket boosters (SRBs) via splashdown, as is done for Rocket Lab's Electron first stage.
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