NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore were on their way home Tuesday after being stranded on the International Space Station (ISS) orbital laboratory for 286 days.
Their return is thanks in no small part to the combined drive and ambition of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk to “go get them.”
The pair decided to accelerate the astronauts’ return and laid the blame for their troubles on the tardy Biden administration.
The replacement crew’s brand new SpaceX capsule still wasn’t ready to fly, so SpaceX subbed it with a used one, hurrying things along by weeks.
UPI reports the pair of astronauts along with Crew-9 members NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov were aboard the SpaceX capsule as it detached from the ISS at 1:05 a.m. EDT, putting them on the 17-hour flight back to Earth.
The SpaceX Dragon is expected to splash down off the coast of Florida at about 5:57 p.m. EDT on Tuesday.
Following months of delays and Trump last month asking ally and SpaceX CEO Musk to “go get” them, Williams and Wilmore are being delivered to their starting point.