The crew undocked from the orbiting outpost at 5:20 p.m. ET Wednesday — about a month earlier than planned —and are scheduled to splash down on Earth early Thursday.

A SpaceX ship recovered the spacecraft from the ocean and at around 1:30 a.m. and welcomed aboard NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, plus Kimiya Yui of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Oleg Platonov of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency.

The NASA International Space Station (ISS) crew that included a sick astronaut splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, California, early on Thursday morning. "Welcome home, Crew-11!" NASA said in an update, adding that the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft hit the on water on schedule at 12:41 a.m. PT.

The Trump administration is indefinitely suspending visa processing for immigrants from 75 countries, including Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Haiti, Somalia and Russia. Starting next week, the move will block visas for many people seeking to work in the US or reunite with their families.