On Apr. 18, SpaceX’s Dragon cargo ship delivered 5,000 pounds of supplies and experiments to the International Space Station. One month later the ship splashed down approximately 300 miles west of Southern California.

Over the coming days a boat will return the craft to a port near Los Angeles. The Dragon will be sent to a SpaceX facility in McGregor, Texas, and the cargo will be returned to NASA.

This is the third successful resupply mission for SpaceX’s Dragon, the only commercial craft to visit the ISS. Nine additional missions remain in the company’s current contract with NASA.

Among the cargo returning from the ISS are samples and experiments that could help NASA to better understand astronaut health. These include analysis of the decreased effectiveness of antibiotics during space travel. Better understanding this problem could also lead to better antibiotics on Earth. Other experiments include tests on plant development in space, such as the T-Cell Activation in Aging experiment.

“The space station is our springboard to deep space and the science samples returned to Earth are critical to improving our knowledge of how space affects humans who live and work there for long durations. Now that Dragon has returned, scientists can complete their analyses, so we can see how results may impact future human space exploration or provide direct benefits to people on Earth,” said William Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations, in a statement.

The Dragon spacecraft could become increasingly important if current tensions between the U.S. and Russia continue. As a response to international sanctions, the Russian government has threatened to stop delivering U.S. astronauts to the ISS. U.S.-based SpaceX originally designed the Dragon to carry both cargo and human passengers. The first manned test flight, however, is not scheduled to take place for two to three years.