SAN DIEGO —

Four astronauts returned to Earth on Saturday after hustling to the International Space Station five months ago to relieve the stuck test pilots of Boeing's Starliner.

Related video above: SpaceX delivers four astronauts to the International Space Station just 15 hours after launch

Their SpaceX capsule parachuted into the Pacific off the Southern California coast a day after departing the orbiting lab.

Splashing down were NASA's Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan's Takuya Onishi and Russia's Kirill Peskov. They launched in March as replacements for the two NASA astronauts assigned to Starliner's botched demo.

Starliner malfunctions kept Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams at the space station for more than nine months instead of a week. NASA ordered Boeing's new crew capsul

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