UPDATE: An earlier version of this story implied that these were the two Boeing astronauts who had been left stranded due to the Boeing capsule failure. It's all sort of confusing, but those astronauts will actually be returning in February. They will stay on the space station along with two SpaceX pilots who arrived four weeks ago, while these other four astronauts returned.
Check it out:
More from the Associated Press:
A SpaceX capsule carrying the crew parachuted before dawn into the Gulf of Mexico just off the Florida coast after undocking from the International Space Station mid-week.
Here are a few photos of the capsule and the recovery:
The three Americans and one Russian should have been back two months ago. But their homecoming was stalled by problems with Boeing's new Starliner astronaut capsule, which came back empty in September because of safety concerns. Then Hurricane Milton interfered, followed by another two weeks of high wind and rough seas.
Boeing's Starliner program, which has experienced multiple delays and failures over years of development, had its most public failure when it sent up a capsule to the International Space Station (ISS) four months ago that had to be scuttled due to major issues, including failing thrusters and weird noises.
The test pilots who originally launched with the Starliner capsule in June will continue to hang around on the ISS for a few more months.
Their replacements are the two Starliner test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, whose own mission went from eight days to eight months, and two astronauts launched by SpaceX four weeks ago. Those four will remain up there until February.
Check out this photo of SpaceX's Dragon capsule as it reentered the atmosphere:
It still boggles my mind that we can build vehicles with humans onboard that withstand that kind of heat!
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