NASA astronauts Wilmore and Williams have safely returned to Earth following an extended space mission.

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams returned to Earth on Tuesday, May 10, 2023, aboard a SpaceX capsule with a gentle splashdown off the coast of Florida. This marked the end of a nine-month ordeal that began when their Boeing Starliner spacecraft, which was supposed to be a weeklong test flight on the International Space Station (ISS), suffered from critical issues.

The extended mission that began in June with Starliner's first attempted crewed flight became a series of technical failures and unknown outcomes due to problems with the propulsion system. What had been planned as an eight-day trip became months long, and in response, NASA had to take rather uncommon measures. In the end, the agency decided to switch Wilmore and Williams to its crew rotation and fly them back on SpaceX, while highlighting Starliner's failures over the past year. The two veteran astronauts, both retired U.S. Navy test pilots, left the ISS early Tuesday, undocking at 1:05 a.m. in the Crew Dragon spacecraft with two other crew members. They landed safely on Earth, bringing an end to a difficult period of 17 hours and marking the end of a difficult period that required a great deal of adaptability.