NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who were stuck in space for more than nine months, are finally on their way back home to Houston. Wilmore and Williams left the International Space Station in a SpaceX capsule early Tuesday with two others and are due to splash down in the evening off the Florida coast, weather permitting.

In August, NASA officials decided that the Starliner spacecraft that had carried Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore to orbit would return to Earth empty. They then juggled astronaut assignments so that Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore would join the space station crew and then return to Earth on a SpaceX spacecraft instead.