Dolphins surround space capsule after its return to Earth in magical moment

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams received a special welcome when they successfully splashed down near Tallahassee, Fla., on Tuesday after nine months at the International Space Station.

Wilmore, Williams, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov were greeted by a pod of dolphins that circled the capsule in the clear blue waters as divers readied it for hoisting onto the recovery ship.

“Now here on your screen we can see dolphins actually, who want to come and play with Dragon,” Kate Tice, engineering manager at SpaceX said during the company’s video stream.

Tice added that the team was working on retrieving the capsule and “getting quick assists from the honorary part of the recovery team, those dolphins.”

NASA shared drone footage of the dolphins circling the SpaceX Dragon capsule on X, writing, “The unplanned welcome crew! Crew-9 had some surprise visitors after splashing down this afternoon.”

“Wow, we got a cute little pod of dolphins. It wasn’t just one or two,” Tice added in the footage shared by NASA.

After the friendly greeting from the cute marine mammals, the astronauts were out of their capsule within an hour, waving and smiling at the cameras while being hustled away in reclining stretchers for routine medical checks.

3:03 NASA’s Suni Williams, Butch Wilmore successfully return to Earth after 9 months stuck on ISS

Wilmore and Williams were expected to be gone just a week or so after launching on Boeing’s new Starliner crew capsule on June 5, 2024. Many problems cropped up on the way to the space station and NASA eventually sent Starliner back empty and transferred the test pilots to SpaceX, pushing their homecoming into February. Then SpaceX capsule issues added another month’s delay.

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Sunday’s arrival of their relief crew meant Wilmore and Williams could finally leave. NASA cut them loose a little early, given the iffy weather forecast later this week. They checked out with NASA’s Hague and Russia’s Gorbunov, who arrived in their own SpaceX capsule last fall with two empty seats reserved for the Starliner duo.

Wilmore and Williams ended up spending a total of 286 days in space — 278 days longer than anticipated when they launched. They had circled Earth 4,576 times and travelled 195 million kilometres by the time of splashdown.

“On behalf of SpaceX, welcome home,” SpaceX Mission Control in California radioed over to the astronauts.

“What a ride,” replied Hague, the capsule’s commander. “I see a capsule full of grins ear to ear.”

This isn’t the first time dolphins have had a front-row seat as astronauts return to Earth. In 2021, one single dolphin was photographed swimming near the recovery boats that were on their way to pick up the Dragon spacecraft used for SpaceX’s Crew-1 mission.

As the recovery team waited for the spacecraft to arrive for splashdown, the dolphin decided not to stick around.

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— With files from The Associated Press