Two astronauts, who spent more than nine months in orbit after a bungled Boeing test flight, have finally said goodbye to their orbiting home.

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams unlocked from the International Space Station, where they’ve been since last spring, and boarded a SpaceX capsule this morning alongside two other astronauts.

The SpaceX capsule undocked in the early hours and is aiming for a splashdown off the Florida Panhandle coast early Tuesday evening, weather permitting.

Wilmore and Williams were originally expected to be gone just a week or so after launching on Boeing’s new Starliner crew capsule on June 5, 2024. So many problems cropped up on the way to the space station that NASA eventually sent Starliner back empty and transferred the test pilots to SpaceX, pushing their homecoming into February. Then SpaceX capsule issues added another month’s delay.

The arrival on Sunday of their relief crew meant Wilmore and Williams could finally leave. NASA cut them loose a little early, given the iffy weather forecast later this week. They left with NASA’s Nick Hague and Russia’s Alexander Gorbunov, who arrived in their own SpaceX capsule last fall with two empty seats reserved for the Starliner duo.

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