The SpaceX Crew Dragon space capsule that will bring back Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams

According to NASA and SpaceX, a SpaceX Crew Dragon space capsule landed at the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday. The spacecraft is scheduled to return trapped astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams home next year.

Shortly after the Dragon spacecraft arrived at the station at 2130 GMT, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov entered the International Space Station (ISS), the agency said in a post on X.

Contact confirmed at 5:30pm ET (2130 UTC). Next, the Dragon spacecraft will complete the docking sequence, and undergo a series of checks before crews can open the hatch and welcome #Crew9 to the @Space_Station. pic.twitter.com/y3ve8FLBqs

— NASA (@NASA) September 29, 2024

Four astronauts were scheduled to be transported to the International Space Station (ISS) by SpaceX Crew-9. However, Wilmore and Williams had to be placed in two vacant seats when their Boeing Starliner spacecraft, which they arrived on in June, was found to be unsuitable for returning them to Earth.

Since then, the two former military test pilots have been stranded on the International Space Station (ISS) due to thruster malfunctions and helium leaks in the Starliner capsule. Starliner was returned to Earth empty earlier this month after NASA determined it was not safe for the crew to return.

The first crew members to travel on the damaged Starliner, Wilmore and Williams, are now scheduled to return home with Hague and Gorbunov aboard Crew Dragon in February of the following year. The originally planned eight-day mission has now stretched into an eight-month odyssey.