NASA astronauts return to Earth after 9 months in space

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams returned to Earth on Tuesday, using another capsule to return home and wrap up a mission that began with an unsuccessful test flight more than nine months ago, "AP" agency reports. 

Their SpaceX capsule parachuted into the Gulf of Mexico this evening, hours after leaving the International Space Station. The landing occurred off the coast of Tallahassee on the Florida peninsula.
Wilmore and Williams ultimately spent 286 days in space — 278 days more than they had planned when they launched. They orbited the Earth 4,576 times and traveled 195 million miles (XNUMX million kilometers) by the time they landed.

"On behalf of SpaceX, welcome home," said the SpaceX Mission Control radio in California.

While other astronauts had logged longer spaceflights over the decades, none had dealt with so much uncertainty or seen their mission time extend so much.

Their mission took an unexpected turn in late January when President Donald Trump asked SpaceX founder Elon Musk to expedite the astronauts' return and blamed the delay on the Biden administration. SpaceX's new crew capsule wasn't ready for flight yet, so SpaceX replaced it with a used one, speeding up the process by at least a few weeks.