The third long-term astronaut team SpaceX launched to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA and left the orbiting outpost safely early Thursday to begin its return to Earth, wrapping up a six-month science mission. The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying three US NASA astronauts and a German astronaut from the European Space Agency detached from the International Space Station shortly after 1 am ET (0500 GMT) and is expected to continue returning the flight in about 23 hours. NASA’s webcast shows a live video of the capsule leaving the space station.

Shortly before the spacecraft separated from the space station, four astronauts in black and white helmets were strapped into the crew capsule and orbited about 250 miles (400 kilometres) above Earth. A few brief rocket thrusts then automatically pushed the capsule safely away from the ISS. If all goes well, the Crew Dragon spacecraft, called Endurance, will touch down in the waters off the coast of Florida at 12:43 am ET (0443 GMT) on Friday.

The Endurance crew, consisting of US astronauts Tom Marshburn, 61, Raja Chari, 44, Kayla Barron, 34, and ESA crewmember Matthias Maurer, 52, arrived at the space station on November 11. Their departure comes about a week after they welcomed their replacement team on the space station, which is home to three Russian cosmonauts on long-duration missions. One of the astronauts, Oleg Artemiev, took over command of the International Space Station from Mashburn before leaving on Thursday, NASA said.

In early April, another all-private astronaut SpaceX launched to the space station under a contract from Houston company Axiom Space left the orbiting laboratory, wrapping up a two-week orbital flight. The NASA-ESA team that flew home Thursday was officially named “Crew 3,” the third full-fledged long-term astronaut team SpaceX has launched to the space station for NASA. They will be carrying about 550 pounds of cargo on the flight back to Earth.

SpaceX, a California-based company, founded in 2002 by billionaire CEO Elon Musk of electric car maker Tesla Inc, recently struck a deal to acquire social media platform Twitter, which has been going on for the past two years. A total of seven manned spaceflights were launched during the year.