By Steve Gorman

(Reuters] – NASA’s landmark two-week spaceflight mission, which included an all-private crew of astronauts, ended Monday with splashdown at the Florida coast.

A SpaceX Crew Dragon carrying four members of the Houston-based startup Axiom Space Inc started its return flight at 9:00 EDT Sunday (0100 GMT on Monday) and it unlanded from orbit around 250 miles (342 km) above Earth.

Crew Dragon would parachute into Atlantic at 1:05 p.m. ET on Monday (1600 GMT). This will complete a 16 hour return to orbit, which had been delayed for several days due to unfavorable weather conditions.

Spanish-born Michael Lopez Alegria was the vice-president for business development of Axiom. Larry Connor (72) from Ohio was named his second-in-command and was an entrepreneur in technology.

Joining them as “mission specialists” were investor-philanthropist and former Israeli fighter pilot Eytan Stibbe, 64, and Canadian businessman and philanthropist Mark Pathy, 52.

They were launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, April 8th, and spent 15 days on the station together with seven government-paid ISS crewmembers: three American astronauts, a German astronaut, and three Russian cosmonauts.

Some wealthy space travelers have been hosted by the ISS from time to another over the years.

The Axiom four-member team was the first to be accepted to the station by all commercial companies. They brought with them 25 scientific and medical experiments that they would conduct on the orbital platform. This package contained research about brain health and cancer, as well as demonstrations of technology to create optics by using microgravity’s surface tension.

SpaceX, NASA, Axiom and NASA all hail the achievement as a landmark in space-based commercialization. It is also what insiders have called the “low-Earth orbit economic” (or “LEO Economy”) for its expansion.

This was SpaceX’s sixth spaceflight of humans in almost two years. It followed four NASA missions to the ISS in September and an “Inspiration 4” flight that launched an all-private crew to Earth orbit.

SpaceX is the private rocket company that Elon Musk founded. These outings are expensive.

According to Mo Islam (head of research at investment firm Republic Capital), Axiom costs customers between $50 and $60 million for each seat. Republic Capital holds shares in Axiom as well as SpaceX.

NASA also selected Axiom to construct a commercial extension to its space station in 2020. This new addition is part of a U.S-Russian-led group that has been operating for over two decades. The Axiom section will eventually replace the ISS, according to plans. This is expected to happen around 2030.