Pioneering commercial spacecraft splashes down

The first commercial spacecraft designed to return to Earth splashed down in the Pacific on Wednesday.

The capsule belonging to Space Exploration Technologies Corp. – known as SpaceX – had been launched three hours earlier from Cape Canaveral, Florida, atop the company’s Falcon 9 rocket.

Nasa ordered the demonstration as a first step to handing over space station supply runs and, eventually, astronaut rides to private businesses. Until now, only governments had managed to recover spacecraft re-entering from orbit.

SpaceX’s spacecraft, called Dragon, circled the Earth twice before parachuting into the Pacific on command.