CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Four astronauts returned to Earth Friday. approximately eight months space station stay It was extended due to Boeing’s capsule problem and Hurricane Milton.

A SpaceX capsule carrying the crew parachuted into the Gulf of Mexico just off the coast of Florida before dawn after separating from the International Space Station midweek.

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Three Americans and a Russian should have returned two months ago. However, their return home was postponed due to problems with Boeing’s new Starliner astronaut capsule. Returned empty in September due to security concerns. Then Hurricane Milton intervened and was followed by two more weeks of high winds and rough seas.

SpaceX launched a quartet of spacecraft in March, with NASA’s Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps, and Russia’s Alexander Grebenkin. Barratt, the only space veteran participating in the mission, acknowledged that support teams back home “had to re-plan and rearrange and kind of re-do everything with us and helped us through all those bumps.”

They are being replaced by two Starliner test pilots, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, whose respective missions extended from eight days to eight months, and two astronauts launched by SpaceX four weeks ago. These four will remain there until February.

After months of occupancy, the space station is now back to its normal crew size of seven (four Americans and three Russians).
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