NASA's two stuck astronauts are finally on their way home after more than nine months in space. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams left the International Space Station in a SpaceX capsule early Tuesday,

NASA removed two astronauts from its Crew-9 mission to allow for Williams and Wilmore to join the cohort, and return onboard the SpaceX Dragon − which carries four people at a time. The altered Crew-9 − only Hague and Gorbunov − launched aboard the SpaceX Dragon Freedom in late September.

Crew-10 pilot Nichole Ayers spearheaded the process of creating the patch on behalf of her crewmates, commander Anne McClain of NASA and mission specialists Takuya Onishi of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Kirill Peskov with Russia's federal space corporation Roscosmos.