Nasa astronauts greeted by dolphins as they splash down after nine months

Two astronauts whose eight-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS) ended up as a nine-month odyssey embroiled in political propaganda have finally returned to Earth.

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, along with their Nasa colleague Nick Hague and the cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov — known collectively as Crew 9 — splashed down off Florida just before 6pm ET (10pm GMT) after a 17-hour journey aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.

“And splashdown … Crew 9 back on Earth,” SpaceX announced. “On behalf of SpaceX, welcome home.” Hague, the crew’s commander, replied as the capsule bobbed in the water: “It’s been an amazing ride … Grins here from ear to ear.”

Wilmore and Williams breathed fresh air for the first time since June 5 last year as engineers opened the capsule’s side hatch 41 minutes after splashdown, having hoisted it aboard a recovery ship. A pod of dolphins played around the capsule as the recovery team worked to hook it up to the vessel.

The capsule undocked from the ISS at 1am ET on Tuesday, beginning a trip that brought the astronauts back through the atmosphere at 17,500mph.Wilmore, 62, and Williams, 59, departed on a Boeing Starliner last June for what was meant to be an eight-day test flight to the ISS and back to certify the new spacecraft for routine operational service.

When Starliner developed technical problems, Nasa managers decided to fly it home empty on safety grounds and extend the pair’s mission, assigning them to join colleagues on the ISS conducting science and technology research.

“Safe journey home. It’s been the honour of a lifetime to cross your path up here on space station. Your service has been very much appreciated,” Anne McClain, a Nasa astronaut and the commander of the crew that swapped places with them on the ISS, told them over the radio as the capsule undocked.

Hague, commander of the homebound flight, said: “We know the station’s in great hands …we’ll be waiting for you back on Earth. Crew 9 is going home.”

Wilmore and Williams’ homecoming is part of a routine crew-swap that was planned last year — using a Crew Dragon capsule that has been docked at the station since September — and ends a 286-day stay in space. Seven astronauts from America, Russia, and Japan remain aboard the ISS.

Later this month, two other astronauts, an American and a Russian, will launch to the ISS and swap out with Don Pettit, a Nasa astronaut, and two Russian colleagues.

Crew routinely spend between four months and just more than a year aboard the ISS, using either Crew Dragon or Soyuz capsules for transportation there and back.

But Wilmore and Williams’ stay became all the more prominent after President Trump and Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, launched baseless claims that President Biden had “abandoned” the pair there for “political reasons”.

Senior Nasa leadership have quashed Musk’s claims that he offered to send a capsule to fetch Wilmore and Williams last year, but that Biden rejected it. “There was no discussion of that whatsoever,” Bill Nelson, the former administrator of Nasa, told the Washington Post. Wilmore and Williams have also repeatedly rejected talk that they were ever stranded.

“That’s been the narrative from day one, ‘stranded’, ‘abandoned’ or ‘stuck’ — and I get it. We both get it. Help us change the narrative. Let’s change it to ‘prepared and committed despite what you’ve been hearing’. That’s what we prefer,” Wilmore appealed in February.

Karen Nyberg, who retired from Nasa five years ago, said there had been “misunderstanding and blatant misinformation” surrounding the mission. “There is no ‘rescue’ mission to get Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams home,” she emphasised in a social media post countering Trump’s claims that the pair were at the centre of a daring and dangerous extraction mission.

“We have had people living on the ISS non-stop since November of 2000, so Butch and Suni are not in a ‘scarier’ or more hazardous situation than any of the previous nearly 300 astronauts and cosmonauts who have spent time there,” said Nyberg.

She added: “Though I know there had to be a huge mental adjustment for Butch and Suni as the plan changed from an eight-day mission to one of several months — making those adjustments is often part of the job.”