Home at last
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams returned to Earth in a SpaceX capsule with a soft splashdown off Florida’s coast in March – nine months after their faulty Boeing Starliner craft upended what was supposed to be a week-long stay on the International Space Station.
Mr Wilmore and Ms Williams, two veteran NASA astronauts and retired US Navy test pilots, had launched into space as Starliner’s first crew in June 2024 for what was expected to be an eight-day test mission.
However, issues with Starliner’s propulsion system led to lengthy delays to their return home, culminating in a NASA decision to fold them into its crew rotation schedule and return them on a SpaceX craft in March.
In this photo from NASA, support teams work on the SpaceX capsule shortly after it landed off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida, on 18 March.