Four astronauts returned to Earth on Friday after a nearly eight-month space station stay that was extended by Boeing’s capsule problems and Hurricane Milton.
A SpaceX capsule carrying the crew parachuted before dawn into the Gulf of Mexico just off the Florida coast after mid-week undocking from the International Space Station.
The three Americans and one Russian should have been back two months ago.
Their homecoming was stalled by problems with Boeing’s new Starliner astronaut capsule, which returned empty in September due to safety concerns.
Then Hurricane Milton interfered, followed by another two weeks of high wind and rough seas.
SpaceX launched the four — NASA’s Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps, and Russia’s Alexander Grebenkin — in March.
Barratt, the only space veteran going into the mission, acknowledged the support teams back home that had “to replan, retool and kind of redo everything right along with us … and helped us to roll with all those punches.”
Their replacements are the two Starliner test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, whose own mission went from eight days to eight months, and two astronauts launched by SpaceX four weeks ago. Those four will remain up there until February.
The space station is now back to its normal crew size of seven — four Americans and three Russians — after months of overflow.
