• SpaceX just brought home two astronauts who were stuck on the International Space Station for months.
• Their return was a fairly routine spaceflight for SpaceX.
• It's a victory Elon Musk can claim after a series of setbacks to his other ventures.

Elon Musk and his many projects have had a rough couple of months, but SpaceX nailed an undisputable win for him on Tuesday.

The rocket company's Crew Dragon spaceship splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico, carrying two NASA astronauts who were stuck on the International Space Station for about nine months.

Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore became international news after their Boeing spaceship glitched as it approached the ISS in June. NASA decided it was safer for them to fly SpaceX home. The change of plans meant they had to stay and serve a full shift with the next astronaut crew, turning their original weeklong mission into nine months.

Their safe return is a win for Musk after a series of high-profile setbacks, from exploding Starship rockets to a Tesla stock crash.

Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

Tesla and SpaceX woes

Williams' and Wilmore's return is a much-needed win for SpaceX and Musk, who is struggling recently.

Musk himself said on Fox Business that he's had "great difficulty" running his companies since taking on the Department of Government Efficiency, which was created by an executive order by President Donald Trump and aims to slash federal spending.

He didn't elaborate, but that day Tesla's stock had dropped 15%, bringing Musk's net worth down $29 billion.

Tesla has also been the subject of a series of protests, boycott efforts, and vandalism incidents in recent months. The electric vehicle company's sales have plunged in multiple countries, including the US.

That all culminated in Trump promoting Tesla cars last week on the White House lawn, where he inspected and praised five of the company's vehicles and said he would buy one.

"The Radical Left Lunatics, as they often do, are trying to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla, one of the World's great automakers, and Elon's 'baby,' in order to attack and do harm to Elon, and everything he stands for," the president wrote on Truth Social ahead of the Tesla event.

Then there's SpaceX. The company's up-and-coming Starship mega-rocket was making significant progress with each uncrewed test flight until this year, when two consecutive flights ended with premature explosions.

Those flights are experimental. In early March, however, one of the company's routine Falcon 9 rocket launches encountered an unexpected issue: The rocket's booster, which normally lands itself on a droneship for reuse, instead caught fire and toppled over after landing.

All the while, Musk has been contending with criticisms and backlash against DOGE — from legal challenges to scrutiny of its hires.

Corporate experts have told Business Insider that Musk is "way overstretched" since taking on DOGE and "may have finally reached his tipping point."

Musk claims victory

SpaceX has been scheduled to bring the two astronauts back since August, when NASA officials decided they weren't confident enough in Boeing's spaceship to return Williams and Wilmore.

Musk started teeing their return up as a new victory in January, when he said on X that President Trump had asked SpaceX to bring them home "as soon as possible."

Musk has since said on Fox News that Williams and Wilmore were "left up there for political reasons," which multiple astronauts have disputed. The day ahead of their return flight he shared a video of Wilmore saying he appreciated Musk and Trump.

Despite the hubbub, this was a pretty routine flight for SpaceX. It was the 10th time the company's Crew Dragon vehicle has returned NASA astronaut crews to Earth in the last five years — in addition to five private Crew Dragon flights.

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• The two stranded astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, are finally coming back to Earth.
• Their spaceflight has become such a drama that Elon Musk and President Trump are commenting on it.
• Meet the two astronauts who flew to space on a Boeing ship, got stuck, and are flying SpaceX back.

Two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams, are finally coming back to Earth on Tuesday. Their spaceship is scheduled to splash down off the coast of Florida at about 5:57 p.m. ET.

The duo — affectionately known as "Butch and Suni" in NASA lingo — has been thrust into the global spotlight since they flew to the International Space Station for a short stint to test Boeing's new Starliner spaceship.

They were supposed to spend about eight days on the ISS for a demonstration flight. As they approached the station in June, though, the Starliner's engines malfunctioned, kicking off the months-long saga of two stranded astronauts.

NASA tapped SpaceX to carry them home, since the company has already successfully flown nine astronaut crews. The decision was made in August, with their return scheduled for early 2025.

Elon Musk said in January that President Trump asked SpaceX to speed up that schedule.

How stuck are the astronauts?

Wilmore and Williams have served a longer-than-average, but not exceptional, shift on the ISS. They're about 100 days shy of the current record for longest US spaceflight, which astronaut Frank Rubio set just two years ago.

Though they have been stuck up there for technical and scheduling reasons, they weren't "abandoned," as Trump said on Truth Social.

After NASA sent Starliner back to Earth without them (it landed safely in the end), the duo took on the regular duties and routine of space-station staffers. They've received supply shipments from NASA and have had their SpaceX return vehicle docked at the space station since September.

NASA officials have said that the original eight-day timeline for their mission was always an estimate, and everyone involved knew it could go longer than that — though not quite this long.

Musk, however, has leapt at the opportunity for his rocket company to take over its competitor's space mission.

At Trump's behest, last month NASA shuffled around SpaceX's spaceship schedule to bring the astronauts home a few weeks earlier than planned. They're set to return to Earth aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon ship on Tuesday.

Who is Sunita Williams?

Like many NASA astronauts, Williams and Wilmore are both decorated US Navy test pilots.

"We've both been on deployments. We're not surprised when deployments get changed," Williams said in a September call with journalists. "Our families are used to that as well."

Williams was born in Ohio and grew up in Needham, Massachusetts. She became a Naval aviator in 1989 and made a series of deployments overseas as part of a helicopter combat support unit, including for Operation Desert Shield and Operation Provide Comfort in the Persian Gulf.

She ran a detachment for Hurricane Andrew relief in Miami in 1992, then spent a few years conducting rotary aircraft test flights before becoming an instructor.

NASA selected Williams to be an astronaut in 1998, while she was deployed on the USS Saipan. She began training two months later. Her first gig at NASA was going to Moscow to work with Russia's space agency on its piece of the International Space Station.

In her wide-ranging time at NASA, Williams has also spent nine days living in an underwater habitat and flown two previous missions totaling 322 days on the International Space Station.

When asked in the September call what she missed about Earth, she said, "of course, the things that we always miss: our families. I miss my two dogs, I miss my friends."

She and her dogs live with her husband, Michael, and the couple enjoy some highly technical hobbies: working on houses, cars, and airplanes together.

Who is Barry 'Butch' Wilmore?

Wilmore is a retired US Navy captain, having spent the first part of his career flying tactical jets.

He's completed 8,000 flight hours, 663 landings on an aircraft carrier, and four operational deployments. During Operation Desert Storm, he carried out 21 combat missions from the flight deck of the USS Kennedy.

He spent some time as a flight instructor at Edwards Air Force Base, California, before NASA selected him as an astronaut in 2000.

He's previously flown two NASA missions: an 11-day mission on the Space Shuttle Atlantis in 2009 and a shift of 167 days on the International Space Station in 2014 and 2015.

Wilmore and his wife, Deanna, are originally from Tennessee. Now, the couple and their two daughters, Daryn and Logan, live in Texas.

During the September call, Wilmore cited a Bible verse about gaining strength from adversity as "how I feel about all of this."

He later added, "We deal with all types of difficulties in all types of situations and it builds a great deal of fortitude and it builds a great deal of character."