Shortly after a SpaceX capsule carrying four astronauts splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday, a pod of dolphins swarmed the spaceship.
After a nine-month-long test flight saga, their SpaceX capsule parachuted into the Gulf of Mexico in the early evening, just hours after departing the International Space Station.
The splashdown occurred off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida, marking the end of their unexpectedly prolonged journey.
As their spaceship bobbed in the ocean like a toasted marshmallow, smooth, gray dorsal fins began to peek above the water around it.
“Here on your screen, we can see dolphins, actually, who want to come and play with Dragon,” Kate Tice, a webcast host and senior quality systems engineering manager at SpaceX, said in the livestream.
The dolphins danced around the capsule for several minutes as a SpaceX recovery crew checked the area for hazardous fumes and prepared the spaceship to get hauled onto a barge. There appeared to be at least six of them.
