Butch Wilmore, Suni Williams and their two crewmates will depart the International Space Station at 1:05 a.m. ET on Tuesday (March 18), weather permitting.

A SpaceX capsule carrying a new crew has docked (ISS), paving the way for astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to come home. The pair were due to be on the ISS for only eight days, but because of technical issues with the experimental spacecraft they arrived on,

SpaceX delivered a four-person crew to the International Space Station early Sunday, setting the stage for Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams to depart.

Their trip to the ISS was only meant to have lasted for one week when Williams and Wilmore blasted off in to space back in June last year. But their time on board the orbital research facility has seen them last until mid-March 2025; more than nine months after leaving the planet.

A pair of US astronauts stuck for more than nine months on the International Space Station will be returned to Earth on Tuesday evening, NASA said.NASA said in a statement on Sunday evening that it had moved forward the astronauts' anticipated ocean splashdown off the Florida coast to approximately 5:57 pm Tuesday (2157 GMT).