While Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore’s situation is unusual, their return trip will be pretty routine, as they were already slated to fly home on a SpaceX capsule as part of a scheduled crew rotation.

SpaceX will launch Starship for a seventh test flight on Thursday, after weather concerns pushed back an experiment that will feature the spacecraft’s first payload deployment test, in what may be the latest milestone for the Elon Musk-owned aerospace company as it develops reusable rockets.

President Donald Trump is asking Elon Musk's SpaceX to help bring home the American astronauts who have been in the International Space Station for nearly eight months — much longer than originally planned.