With floating hugs and smiles all around, the two NASA astronauts who crewed the ill-fated Boeing Starliner greeted their replacements aboard the International Space Station early Sunday morning.

The Boeing Starliner spacecraft successfully completed its uncrewed flight back to Earth, NASA announced overnight. The return ended the Starliner’s most recent flight test months later than intended and leaves its original crew, NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Suni Williams, aboard the International Space Station until next year.

NASA will wait at least another two days to launch its next space station crew, delaying the return of Starliner astronauts Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Sunita Williams a bit longer.

The Crew-9 mission, consisting of NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, is set to return to Earth after a brief handover period with the newly arrived Crew-10 expedition crew, pending weather conditions at the splashdown sites off the coast of Florida.

Just over a day after blasting off, a SpaceX crew capsule arrived at the International Space Station on Sunday, delivering the replacements for NASA’s two stuck astronauts.

Four new astronauts arrived at the International Space Station aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon on Sunday. Their arrival finally provides a way home for two NASA astronauts who have been on the ISS since June 2024.

The return to Earth of Boeing's Starliner astronauts stuck on the International Space Station inched closer as their replacements arrived to Florida for their relief flight this week.

NASA astronauts Sunita Williams, Nick Hague, Barry Wilmore, and Donald Pettit unbox Thanksgiving meals, from the International Space Station (ISS), in this screen grab taken from a handout video, released on November 26,