NASA Astronauts Return To Earth After Being Stuck In Space For 286 Days

Stuck Astronauts Finally Head Back To Earth

They're finally back home.

After 286 days stuck in space aboard the International Space Station, NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore boarded a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule to come back to Earth on Tuesday.

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The pair flew to the space station aboard the Boeing Starliner, which quickly ran into problems and was deemed too unsafe to fly them back to Earth, thus stranding them for months in space. Their descent back to Earth took most of the day Tuesday as their capsule slowly returned back to our planet's atmosphere.

They splashed down just off the Gulf Coast south of Tallahassee within seconds of their target of 5:57 p.m. EDT Tuesday evening. Less than an hour later, the astronauts were waving to cameras before being moved to reclining stretchers for the typical routine medical evaluation aboard the SpaceX recovery ship, named Megan.

"What a ride," Hague radioed back to SpaceX Mission Control in California. "I see a capsule full of grins ear to ear."

The pair's 286 days in space is far from a record, which is held by Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov, who spent 437 days in orbit in 1994-95, according to CNN.com.

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And according to NASA, a 200-plus-day stay in space should not lead to any significant health issues when they return to the gravity of Earth, but there will be an acclimation period, which is typical after lengthy periods in orbit.

"Every astronaut that launches into space, we teach them don't think about when you're coming home. Think about how well your mission's going and if you're lucky, you might get to stay longer," NASA's space operations mission chief and former astronaut Ken Bowersox said last week, according to the Associated Press.