Stranded in space for months: Astronauts finally back on Earth
From Christina Horsten
Washington - After having to stay on the International Space Station (ISS) for around nine months longer than originally planned due to a spaceship malfunction , two US astronauts are back on Earth.
Suni Williams and Barry Wilmore landed in the sea off the coast of the US state of Florida in a Crew Dragon space capsule from Elon Musk 's space company SpaceX , as live images from the US space agency NASA showed.
Her US colleague Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov were also on board.
The capsule had undocked from the IS around 17 hours earlier.
Astronauts are to stay for a week, only to return home nine months later
Williams and Wilmore arrived at the ISS at the beginning of June and were only supposed to stay there for around a week.
However, due to technical problems with their 'Starliner' spacecraft, NASA decided for safety reasons to let the spacecraft developed by the US company Boeing fly back to Earth empty.
In September, only two instead of the originally planned four space travelers, Hague and Gorbunov, flew to the ISS in a "Crew Dragon" - leaving two seats free for Williams and Wilmore.
The 59-year-old Williams and her 62-year-old colleague Wilmore had been in space several times before. They are considered experienced astronauts. For Hague and Gorbunov, it was planned from the outset that they would stay on the space station for six months.