Sunita Williams Homecoming Live Updates: Nine Months Later, the Astronaut Returns to Earth

On Tuesday morning, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams, who had been stranded at the ISS for over nine months, started their journey back. At 10:35 am IST, Williams and Wilmore disembarked from the ISS and began their 17-hour journey back to Earth, according to NASA.

 Around 3:27 am IST on Wednesday, the spaceship, SpaceX's Dragon, piloted by Elon Musk, will splash down off the coast of the U.S. state of Florida.

 In order to test Boeing's Starliner on its maiden crewed flight, the two astronauts took a scheduled round-trip voyage to the orbiting lab in June of last year. However, due to propulsion issues, the spaceship was judged unfit to carry them back and instead returned empty.