4 astronauts return to Earth after being delayed by Boeing’s capsule trouble, hurricane ‘Milton’

Four astronauts returned to Earth on Friday after a nearly eight-month space station stay extended by Boeing’s capsule trouble and hurricane ‘Milton’.

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.

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.

SpaceX launched the four — NASA’s Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps, and Russia’s Alexander Grebenkin — in March. Barratt, the only space veteran going into the mission, acknowledged the support teams back home that had “to replan, retool and kind of redo everything right along with us ... and helped us to roll with all those punches”.

Their replacements are the two Starliner test pilots Butch Wilmore and Sunita 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.

The space station is now back to its normal crew size of seven — four Americans and three Russians — after months of overflow.