CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Four astronauts returned to Earth on Friday after spending nearly eight months on the space station, a mission that was extended due to issues with Boeing’s capsule and Hurricane Milton.
A SpaceX capsule carrying the crew parachuted into the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida coast before dawn, after detaching from the International Space Station mid-week.
The three Americans and one Russian were originally scheduled to come back two months ago. However, problems with Boeing’s new Starliner astronaut capsule, which returned empty in September due to safety concerns, delayed their return. Hurricane Milton then intervened, 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 experienced astronaut on the mission, acknowledged the support teams back home who “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 mission went from eight days to eight months, and two astronauts launched by SpaceX four weeks ago. These four will remain in space until February.
The space station is now back to its normal crew size of seven — four Americans and three Russians — after months of having an overflow.