NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams departed the International Space Station early on Tuesday morning in a SpaceX capsule for a long-awaited trip back to Earth, nine months after their faulty Boeing Starliner craft upended what was to be a roughly week-long test mission.

Reaching orbit from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, the newest crew includes NASA’s Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, both military pilots; and Japan’s Takuya Onishi and Russia’s Kirill Peskov, both former airline pilots. They will spend the next six months at the space station, considered the normal stint, after springing Wilmore and Williams free.