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SpaceX successfully completed the first step on Sunday to rescue two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station, but it won’t bring the pair home for another five months.
Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams expected to be in space for just one week when they launched into orbit on Boeing’s (BA+1.28%) first astronaut flight in June. However, safety concerns about the Boeing Starliner aircraft left them stranded on the International Space Station.
SpaceX’s Dragon aircraft carrying NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian Space Agency Astronaut Alexander Gorbunov launched Sunday with two empty seats so that Williams and Wilmore could return home with them in February.
Upon their return, Williams and Wilmore will have been in space for eight months.
A video on Sunday showed the four astronauts embracing upon landing at the space station.
Hague and Gorbunov had already planned to conduct months of research and return in February.
Hague acknowledged the difficulties of launching the Dragon with two fewer crew members and returning with astronauts not trained in the aircraft.
“We’ve got a dynamic challenge ahead of us,” he said before takeoff, according to the Associated Press. “We know each other and we’re professionals and we step up and do what’s asked of us.”