Sunita Williams Returns | Dolphins Welcome NASA Astronauts To Earth | Splashdown Video Astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore returned to Earth after an eight-day mission turned into a nine-month ordeal in space. The two astronauts came home with NASA's Nick Hague, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, forming NASA/SpaceX Crew-9. Elon Musk's SpaceX Dragon spacecraft brought the astronauts back home and splashed down at 3:27 am off the Florida coast. The astronauts were welcomed by Dolphins who were seen swimming around the capsule which was later retrieved by the recovery vessel.