Incredible! Dolphins greet the crew stranded for 9 months in the ISS upon their return to Earth

A group of curious dolphins welcomed the SpaceX Crew-9 astronauts on March 18, during their splashdown off the coast of Florida. The crew included Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who spent 286 days in space instead of the originally planned two weeks.

At precisely 5:57 PM (11:27 PM in France), the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico, near Tallahassee, Florida. On board were NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams, Butch Wilmore, and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. As the recovery vessel approached, aerial cameras captured stunning footage of dolphins swimming near the spacecraft. "Here on the screen, we can see... dolphins, in fact, wanting to come play with Dragon," said Kate Tice, SpaceX's engineering director, in surprise during the NASA livestream.

This unusual encounter with dolphins capped off an extraordinary space mission. For two of the four crew members, this return marks the end of an unexpectedly long space adventure. Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore had originally launched in June 2024 on a test flight aboard Boeing's Starliner, but unforeseen incidents extended their stay aboard the ISS.