Video: Liftoff of Atlas 5 with GPS 2F-10

SpaceX’s first Crew Dragon spacecraft wrapped up its five-day stay at the International Space Station at 2:31 a.m. EST (0731 GMT) Friday with a smooth undocking, then nailed an on-target splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean east of Florida at 8:45 a.m. EST (1345 GMT).

NASA is sure enough that Boeing and SpaceX can safely launch astronauts to the International Space Station by early 2019 to hold off paying Russia to keep flying U.S. crews to the research complex, and one official says a deadline to order parts for new Russian Soyuz crew capsules may have already passed.

Astra’s next small satellite launcher has shipped to Kodiak Island in Alaska for final preparations ahead of a test flight planned in early August, five months after the company’s first orbital rocket faltered before getting off the ground.