A pod of bottlenose dolphins seemingly took interest in the capsule that dropped out of the sky, circling and surfacing as SpaceX team members worked to recover their spacecraft.

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams returned to Earth on Tuesday after more than 280 days in space. Their water landing, which came after about a 17-hour voyage, is something of a storybook ending to the Starliner saga that has captivated the nation and recently become the subject of political posturing.

Wilmore and Williams will return on the SpaceX Dragon Freedom, the same spacecraft that transported the Crew-9 astronauts to the ISS. The astronauts' return is not a rescue mission, as their extended stay was planned last summer to accommodate crew rotation and space station operations.