Four astronauts are back on Earth after nearly eight months in orbit. Their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, named Freedom, splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off Los Angeles at 11:34 a.m. ET Thursday, NASA said.

The crew is NASA astronauts Jessica Meir, the commander, and Jack Hathaway, the pilot, along with European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.

The trip home went to plan. Dragon fired its thrusters for about nine minutes starting at 10:46 a.m. ET to drop out of orbit, CBS News reported. Its main parachutes then slowed it to about 15 mph for a gentle landing roughly 50 miles west of Los Angeles.

Recovery teams on fast boats secured the capsule first. Then a SpaceX ship lifted Dragon onto its deck with the crew inside, NASA said. After medical checks, the crew was to fly to shore by helicopter and then on to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The mission lasted 237 days. The crew circled Earth more than 3,792 times and traveled more than 100 million miles, NASA said. They also made four spacewalks to fix and upgrade the aging station.

Meir has now spent 440 days in space in her career. That puts her in NASA's top 10 for total time in orbit, the agency said. This was the first spaceflight for Hathaway and Adenot.

Crew-12 launched on Feb. 13 and reached the station a day later. Their replacements arrived earlier this month, CBS News reported.

The astronauts will talk about their science work at a news conference at 3:30 p.m. ET on Oct. 15 in Houston. Meir, Hathaway and Fedyaev will take part. Adenot is returning to Europe and will not attend, NASA said.

What we know: Crew-12 landed safely Thursday after 237 days in space.
What we don't: What the crew will share about their research at next week's briefing.