Two NASA astronauts who had been in orbit for nine months were eventually returned to Earth aboard a SpaceX craft, concluding a tale that drew international attention.
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who were seated inside a Dragon capsule with two other crew members—NASA’s Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov—fell to Earth using parachutes and splashed down off the Florida coast at 18:00 local time on Tuesday.
Crews in boats were racing to recover the scorched capsule bobbing in a glassy ocean.
The astronauts will undergo standard medical checks before flying back to Houston to reunite with their families.
The astronaut duo’s trip marks the sixth-longest continuous stay at the ISS among Nasa astronauts, according to the agency’s website.
Williams has now logged the second-most time in space by a US astronaut, with 608 days total.
Wilmore and Williams arrived at the ISS last June on a Boeing spacecraft with plans to spend roughly a week in space. But that brief trip turned into roughly nine months when Nasa decided in August the pair would come home on a rival SpaceX capsule instead, due to technical issues with their Boeing vehicle.
The ordeal put an embarrassing spotlight on Boeing’s struggling space business after the company was rocked by a series of crises that forced a change in senior leadership.
In parallel, their story has highlighted how dependent Nasa has become on SpaceX to keep the agency’s major human spaceflight programs up and running.
The astronauts’ extended stay in orbit also triggered political point-scoring at the highest echelons of the US government.
President Donald Trump accused former President Joe Biden’s administration of virtually abandoning them and SpaceX Chief.
Executive Officer Elon Musk claimed that Biden’s team left them in space for political reasons.
