Splashdown

This has been the primary recovery method of American capsules including NASA’s Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Orion along with the private SpaceX Dragon.

It is also possible for the Boeing Starliner, Russian Soyuz, and the Chinese Shenzhou crewed capsules to land in water in case of contingency.

[3][4] On early Mercury flights, a helicopter attached a cable to the capsule, lifted it from the water and delivered it to a nearby ship.

All later Mercury, Gemini and Apollo capsules had a flotation collar (similar to a rubber life raft) attached to the spacecraft to increase their buoyancy.

Apollo 11 was America's first Moon landing mission and marked the first time that humans walked on the surface of another planetary body.

At the request of NASA, both the crew and cargo variations of the Dragon 2 capsule splash down off the coast of Florida, either in the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico.

Due to weight considerations, the airbag design concept was dropped for Orion, and it conducts landings via splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California.

These recovery operation mishaps can be mitigated by placing several vessels on standby in different locations, but this can be an expensive option.

[16] SpaceX has conducted propulsive splashdowns of the Falcon 9 first stage, Super Heavy booster, and Starship spacecraft.

Apollo 15 makes contact with the Pacific Ocean.
Locations of Atlantic Ocean splashdowns of American spacecraft prior to the 21st century
Locations of Pacific Ocean splashdowns of American spacecraft
Apollo 14 returns to Earth, 1971.
The splashdown of the SpaceX CRS-25 resupply mission
Space Shuttle SRB being recovered by Freedom Star after splashing down on STS-133