The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule has undocked from the International Space Station.
The Dragon pulled away from the station early Friday, and an Atlantic Ocean splashdown is expected Friday morning.
The Dragon brought supplies and equipment to the space station where it stayed five days as astronauts conducted tests and inspected the Dragon’s cabin.
The crew capsule did not have any humans aboard, just a test dummy named Ripley, a reference to the lead character in the “Alien” movies. Ripley was riddled with sensors to monitor how flight in the capsule would feel for humans.
The Dragon is the first American commercially built-and-operated crew spacecraft in eight years, since the end of the space shuttle program.
The U.S. relies on Russia to launch astronauts to the space station, at a cost of about $80 million per ticket.
NASA has awarded millions of dollars to SpaceX and Boeing to design and operate a capsule to launch astronauts into orbit from American soil beginning some time this year.
It is not immediately clear if that goal will be reached.
SpaceX is entrepreneur Elon Musk’s company. Musk is also the CEO of electric carmaker Tesla.
