They set off to spend eight days at the space station. The trip lasted nine months.

On Tuesday, two NASA astronauts who had been in orbit since June, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, splashed down in calm, azure waters off the coast of the Florida Panhandle, concluding a saga that had captivated the country since last summer.

Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore blasted off in June for the International Space Station on their test flight of Starliner, a Boeing spacecraft that was to provide NASA with another option, outside of SpaceX, to carry astronauts to and from orbit. But the Starliner experienced problems with its propulsion system, prompting NASA to send it back to Earth with no crew aboard.

It was a SpaceX capsule, the Crew Dragon, that brought them back from space on Tuesday. The spacecraft detached from the space station just after 1 a.m. Eastern time and then traveled back to Earth, slowing from more than 17,000 miles an hour before deploying four large parachutes that gently plopped the spacecraft into the water just before 6 p.m.

Minutes later, as recovery teams inspected the capsule, a pod of curious dolphins circled, a playful terrestrial welcoming party.

Image

From left, NASA’s Butch Wilmore, Russia’s Aleksandr Gorbunov, NASA’s Nick Hague and NASA’s Suni Williams waiting to exit the SpaceX capsule after splashing down on Tuesday.Credit…SpaceX, via Associated Press

Once the capsule had been hoisted onto a ship, the door was opened and the beaming astronauts were extracted from the spacecraft. After months of weightlessness, their bodies still adjusting to the pull of gravity, they were lifted onto gurneys.

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