Astronauts stuck in space return safely

Weeklong mission ends up in 9-month odyssey as spacecraft lands on Earth

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have returned to Earth in one of Elon Musk's SpaceX capsules, splashing down off Florida nine months after what originally was to be a weeklong stay on the International Space Station.

Wilmore and Williams, strapped inside their Crew Dragon spacecraft along with two other astronauts, undocked from the ISS early on Tuesday to embark on a 17-hour trip to Earth, after bidding farewell to the station's seven other astronauts.

The four-person crew, formally part of NASA's Crew-9 astronaut-rotation mission, reentered Earth's atmosphere around 5:45 pm local time. Using Earth's atmosphere and two sets of parachutes, the craft slowed its orbital speed of roughly 27,000 km/h to 27 km/h at splashdown off Tallahassee in the Gulf of Mexico.