NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore have finally returned to Earth.

Space stocks surged on Wednesday. Momentus rose 20%; Virgin Galactic rose 15%; Boeing rose 7%; Planet Labs Pbc and Rocket Lab USA, Inc. rose 5%; BlackSky Technology Inc. and Intuitive Machines rose 4%.

The two had planned to stay just a week at the International Space Station when they launched on the first crewed flight of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft in June. Instead, they wound up staying at the orbiting lab for more than nine months.

At long last, the astronauts have splashed down after having journeyed back to Earth inside a SpaceX Dragon capsule. Along with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, Williams and Wilmore left the space station at 1:05 a.m. ET Tuesday. The group of four, known as Crew-9, splashed down off Florida around 5:57 p.m. ET.

Their return closed out an unusual and dramatic chapter of spaceflight history, which began last year when Williams and Wilmore ran into problems with the Boeing vehicle's thrusters as it was docking to the space station. In the end, NASA decided to bring the Starliner back to Earth in September without anyone on board.

The two astronauts, meanwhile, stayed at the space station and synced up their return with Hague and Gorbunov, who arrived in September for a roughly six-month mission.