Stuck in space no more, NASA as­tro­nauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams re­turned to Earth on Tues­day, hitch­ing a dif­fer­ent ride home to close out a saga that be­gan with a bun­gled test flight more than nine months ago.

Their SpaceX cap­sule para­chut­ed in­to the Gulf of Mex­i­co in the ear­ly evening, just hours af­ter de­part­ing the In­ter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion. Splash­down oc­curred off the coast of Tal­la­has­see in the Flori­da Pan­han­dle, bring­ing their un­planned odyssey to an end.

With­in an hour, the as­tro­nauts were out of their cap­sule, wav­ing and smil­ing at the cam­eras while be­ing hus­tled away in re­clin­ing stretch­ers for rou­tine med­ical checks.

It all start­ed with a flawed Boe­ing test flight last spring.

The two ex­pect­ed to be gone just a week or so af­ter launch­ing on Boe­ing’s new Star­lin­er crew cap­sule on June 5. So many prob­lems cropped up on the way to the space sta­tion that NASA even­tu­al­ly sent Star­lin­er back emp­ty and trans­ferred the test pi­lots to SpaceX, push­ing their home­com­ing in­to Feb­ru­ary. Then SpaceX cap­sule is­sues added an­oth­er month’s de­lay.

Sun­day’s ar­rival of their re­lief crew meant Wilmore and Williams could fi­nal­ly leave. NASA cut them loose a lit­tle ear­ly, giv­en the iffy weath­er fore­cast lat­er this week. They checked out with NASA’s Nick Hague and Rus­sia’s Alexan­der Gor­bunov, who ar­rived in their own SpaceX cap­sule last fall with two emp­ty seats re­served for the Star­lin­er duo.

Wilmore and Williams end­ed up spend­ing 286 days in space — 278 days longer than an­tic­i­pat­ed when they launched. They cir­cled Earth 4,576 times and trav­eled 121 mil­lion miles (195 mil­lion kilo­me­ters) by the time of splash­down.

“On be­half of SpaceX, wel­come home,” ra­dioed SpaceX Mis­sion Con­trol in Cal­i­for­nia.

“What a ride,” replied Hague, the cap­sule’s com­man­der. “I see a cap­sule full of grins ear to ear.”

Dol­phins cir­cled the cap­sule as divers read­ied it for hoist­ing on­to the re­cov­ery ship. Once safe­ly on board, the side hatch was opened and the as­tro­nauts were helped out, one by one. Williams was next-to-last out, fol­lowed by Wilmore who gave two gloved thumbs-up.

Wilmore and Williams’ plight cap­tured the world’s at­ten­tion, giv­ing new mean­ing to the phrase “stuck at work” and turn­ing “Butch and Suni” in­to house­hold names. While oth­er as­tro­nauts had logged longer space­flights over the decades, none had to deal with so much un­cer­tain­ty or see the length of their mis­sion ex­pand by so much.

Wilmore and Williams quick­ly tran­si­tioned from guests to full-fledged sta­tion crew mem­bers, con­duct­ing ex­per­i­ments, fix­ing equip­ment and even space­walk­ing to­geth­er. With 62 hours over nine space­walks, Williams set a record: the most time spent space­walk­ing over a ca­reer among fe­male as­tro­nauts.

Both had lived on the or­bit­ing lab be­fore and knew the ropes, and brushed up on their sta­tion train­ing be­fore rock­et­ing away. Williams be­came the sta­tion’s com­man­der three months in­to their stay and held the post un­til ear­li­er this month.

Their mis­sion took an un­ex­pect­ed twist in late Jan­u­ary when Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump asked SpaceX founder Elon Musk to ac­cel­er­ate the as­tro­nauts’ re­turn and blamed the de­lay on the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion. The re­place­ment crew’s brand new SpaceX cap­sule still wasn’t ready to fly, so SpaceX subbed it with a used one, hur­ry­ing things along by at least a few weeks.

Af­ter splash­down, Musk of­fered his con­grat­u­la­tions via X. NASA’s Joel Mon­tal­bano said the space agency was al­ready look­ing at var­i­ous op­tions when Trump made his call to hur­ry the as­tro­nauts home.

Even in the mid­dle of the po­lit­i­cal storm, Wilmore and Williams con­tin­ued to main­tain an even keel at pub­lic ap­pear­ances from or­bit, cast­ing no blame and in­sist­ing they sup­port­ed NASA’s de­ci­sions from the start.

NASA hired SpaceX and Boe­ing af­ter the shut­tle pro­gram end­ed, in or­der to have two com­pet­ing U.S. com­pa­nies for trans­port­ing as­tro­nauts to and from the space sta­tion un­til it’s aban­doned in 2030 and steered to a fiery reen­try. By then, it will have been up there more than three decades; the plan is to re­place it with pri­vate­ly run sta­tions so NASA can fo­cus on moon and Mars ex­pe­di­tions.

“This has been nine months in the mak­ing, and I couldn’t be proud­er of our team’s ver­sa­til­i­ty, our team’s abil­i­ty to adapt and re­al­ly build for the fu­ture of hu­man space­flight,” NASA’s com­mer­cial crew pro­gram man­ag­er Steve Stich said.

With Star­lin­er still un­der en­gi­neer­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion, SpaceX will launch the next crew for NASA as soon as Ju­ly. Stich said NASA will have un­til sum­mer to de­cide whether the crew af­ter that one will be flown by SpaceX or Boe­ing — or whether Boe­ing will have to prove it­self by fly­ing car­go be­fore peo­ple again.

Both re­tired Navy cap­tains, Wilmore and Williams stressed they didn’t mind spend­ing more time in space — a pro­longed de­ploy­ment rem­i­nis­cent of their mil­i­tary days. But they ac­knowl­edged it was tough on their fam­i­lies.

Wilmore, 62, missed most of his younger daugh­ter’s se­nior year of high school; his old­er daugh­ter is in col­lege. Williams, 59, had to set­tle for in­ter­net calls from space to her hus­band, moth­er and oth­er rel­a­tives.

“We have not been wor­ried about her be­cause she has been in good spir­its,” said Fal­gu­ni Pandya, who is mar­ried to Williams’ cousin. “She was def­i­nite­ly ready to come home.”

Prayers for Williams and Wilmore were of­fered up at 21 Hin­du tem­ples in the U.S. in the months lead­ing up to their re­turn, said or­ga­niz­er Te­jal Shah, pres­i­dent of World Hin­du Coun­cil of Amer­i­ca. Williams has spo­ken fre­quent­ly about her In­di­an and Sloven­ian her­itage. Prayers for their safe re­turn al­so came from Wilmore’s Bap­tist church in Hous­ton, where he serves as an el­der.

Crowds in Jhu­lasan, the an­ces­tral home of Williams’ fa­ther, danced and cel­e­brat­ed in a tem­ple and per­formed rit­u­als dur­ing the home­com­ing.

Af­ter re­turn­ing in the gulf — Trump in Jan­u­ary signed an ex­ec­u­tive or­der re­nam­ing the body of wa­ter Gulf of Amer­i­ca — Wilmore and Williams will have to wait un­til they’re off the SpaceX re­cov­ery ship and flown to Hous­ton be­fore re­unit­ing with their loved ones. The three NASA as­tro­nauts will be checked out by flight sur­geons as they ad­just to grav­i­ty, of­fi­cials said, and should be al­lowed to go home af­ter a day or two.

CAPE CANAVER­AL, Fla. (AP)