Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are heading home after about nine months at the International Space Station. The two veteran NASA astronauts were only supposed to be in space for a little more than a week.

The Starliner crew was originally meant to stay on board the ISS for a week, but issues with Boeing's Starliner spacecraft severely delayed their return to Earth.

NASA removed two astronauts from its Crew-9 mission to allow for Williams and Wilmore to join the cohort, and return onboard the SpaceX Dragon − which carries four people at a time. The altered Crew-9 − only Hague and Gorbunov − launched aboard the SpaceX Dragon Freedom in late September.