NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams departed the International Space Station early on Tuesday morning in a SpaceX capsule for a long-awaited trip back to Earth, nine months after their faulty Boeing Starliner craft upended what was to be a roughly week-long test mission.

Two NASA astronauts have splashed down off the coast of Florida after spending more than nine months stuck in space. The astronauts' journey back from the International Space Station took 17 hours. Senior NASA administrator Joel Montalbano described the landing as "beautiful" - and said their 150 experiments and 900 hours of research will inform future moon missions.