New Delhi: Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams, who have been stuck on the International Space Station (ISS) for over nine months, are finally set to return to Earth on Tuesday evening.

The astronauts will be transported home aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon craft, which arrived at the ISS early Sunday, along with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.

The prolonged stay of Wilmore and Williams was due to propulsion issues with the Boeing Starliner spacecraft, which they were testing on its maiden crewed voyage. The spacecraft was deemed unfit to fly them back to Earth, leaving them stranded on the ISS since June.

According to NASA, the astronauts' return journey will be broadcast live from Monday evening, and they are expected to splash down off the Florida coast at approximately 5:57 pm Tuesday (2157 GMT).

This revised schedule allows the crew members to complete their handover duties and provides operational flexibility ahead of expected unfavorable weather conditions later in the week.

The nine-month stay of Wilmore and Williams is significantly longer than the standard ISS rotation period of six months.

However, it's shorter than the US space record of 371 days set by NASA astronaut Frank Rubio in 2023, and the world record of 437 days held by Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov.