After nine months In Orbit, stranded astronauts have finally returned to planet earth.
Wilmore and Williams had been stranded on the ISS since June due to propulsion issues with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft during its first crewed mission.
They were meant to spend just eight days at the station, but the malfunction rendered the vehicle unsafe and they were forced to wait nine months for a return flight.
The duo astronauts returned home with their fellow Crew-9 astronauts, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft.
The spacecraft splashed down off Florida’s coast at 5:57 p.m. Tuesday Eastern Time (2157 GMT), according to NASA live broadcast.
The crew undocked with the ISS early on Tuesday to start an about 17-hour journey home. The spacecraft completed multiple orbit-lowering maneuvers, and re-entered Earth’s atmosphere before a parachute-supported splashdown off Florida’s coast.
