By Joey Roulette WASHINGTON (Reuters) -NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams returned to Earth in a SpaceX capsule on Tuesday with a soft splashdown off Florida's coast, nine months after their faulty Boeing Starliner craft upended what was to be a week-long stay on the International Space Station.

Their SpaceX capsule parachuted into the Gulf of Mexico in the early evening, just hours after departing the International Space Station.

Weill Cornell Medicine professor Dr. Christopher Mason and former astronaut Jose M. Hernandez shared their expectations for how the stranded NASA astronauts will readjust to Earth.