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.

NASA removed two astronauts from its Crew-9 mission to allow for Williams and Wilmore to join the cohort, and return onboard the SpaceX Dragon − which carries four people at a time. The altered Crew-9 − only Hague and Gorbunov − launched aboard the SpaceX Dragon Freedom in late September.