Strapped into the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule Endeavour, three NASA astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut returned to Earth early Friday, splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico to close out an extended 235-day expedition to the International Space Station.
After a high-speed re-entry above Central America and a steep descent to the Gulf, Crew 8 commander Matthew Dominick, co-pilot Michael Barratt, astronaut Jeanette Epps and cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin settled to a gentle, on-target splashdown south of Pensacola, Florida, at 3:29 a.m. EDT.
Number of days stranded
The starliner astronauts are still up there (and will be until they return on the crew 9 capsule in February). This is the crew that went up before them returning to earth
However, their mission did get extended because of Starliner. While Starliner was sitting on the ISS, it occupied the docking port, so the next crew (their relief crew, essentially) couldn’t be sent up.