A splashdown is a spacecraft landing in water at the end of re-entry, descending under parachutes to an ocean recovery zone. Used by Apollo and revived by SpaceX's Dragon capsules, it lets a capsule land softly without landing rockets or a runway — at the cost of a naval recovery operation.
Understanding Splashdown
Anatomy of a Dragon recovery
Dragon jettisons its trunk, performs the deorbit burn, and re-enters shielded by its ablative heat shield. Around 5.5 km altitude two drogue chutes deploy to stabilise and slow the capsule; four main parachutes follow near 2 km. After splashdown, fast boats verify the capsule is safe to approach, recover the parachutes and rig the spacecraft for lifting; the recovery ship's hydraulic cradle then hoists Dragon aboard, where medical teams meet the crew. The entire sequence from deorbit burn to crew egress typically takes under two hours.
Why America chose water and Russia chose land
Geography drove the split. The United States, launching east over the Atlantic and Pacific, always had ocean beneath its returning capsules and a blue-water navy to fetch them. The Soviet programme launched over the Eurasian landmass, so Soyuz perfected land recovery: parachutes plus solid retrorockets that fire a metre above the steppe to soften impact. Both traditions persist — Dragon splashes down, Soyuz and Shenzhou thump down — and each considers its own method the more sensible.