In Pictures | The Moment The World Awaited: Sunita Williams & Crew-9 Astronauts Safely Return Home

Sunita Williams, Butch Wilmore, Nick Hague, and Aleksandr Gorbunov successfully splashed down off the Florida coast at 5:57 PM ET on Tuesday.

Their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, Freedom, re-entered Earth's atmosphere, enduring temperatures of 3,000°F (1650°C) before parachuting.

The astronauts will be retrieved by a recovery vessel and flown to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston for medical evaluations.

Originally launched in June 2023 aboard Boeing’s Starliner for an eight-day test mission, but propulsion failures left them stranded. 

Instead of rushing a rescue, NASA reassigned them to SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission, allowing them to return safely with Crew Dragon.  

Their extended mission made headlines, with the duo jokingly referred to as the “stranded astronauts." 

During their stay, they contributed to crucial space research, station maintenance, and microgravity experiments.

Before departure, Crew-9 bid a heartfelt farewell to their ISS colleagues, with Nick Hague saying, “Crew-9 is going home.”

Their safe landing marks the conclusion of an extraordinary, unexpected chapter in human spaceflight history.

Ultimately, the duo spent 286 days in space—278 days longer than planned.