The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft descended under parachute from a bright blue sky, plopping into sparkling clear water off the Gulf Coast of Florida south of Tallahassee. The nine-month journey of Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams had finally come to an end.

Their return marks an unprecedented event in space travel, as no astronauts have ever had to switch spacecraft mid-mission between two different organizations. “There’s never been a situation like this where astronauts had to switch plans in the middle of their mission and come back on a totally different spacecraft,

Wilmore and Williams, both ex-Navy pilots and veterans of two previous space missions, flew to the orbital lab in June last year, on what was supposed to be a days-long round trip to test out Boeing’s Starliner on its first crewed flight.