Williams smiled and waved as she left the re-entry capsule. She and the other returning astronauts were strapped into gurneys and taken for medical exams on the recovery ship before they could return to their families.

As NASA astronaut Sunita Williams made her splashdown to Earth on Tuesday evening, excited eyes were fixed on screens across her hometown of Needham.

Astronaut and Massachusetts native Sunita L. Williams is back home after being stranded on the International Space Station (ISS) along with astronaut Butch Wilmore of Tennessee for nearly 300 days. The Dragon, carrying Williams, Wilmore, NASA astronaut Nick Hague, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, touched down off the coast of Florida.