The US astronauts stranded on the International Space Station are home at last — more than nine months after their days-long jaunt into orbit turned into a headline-grabbing space odyssey.

Barry ‘Butch’ Wilmore, 61, and Sunita ‘Suni’ Williams, 59, only planned to be floating in the endless abyss of space for a week. Eight days tops. But the two Nasa astronauts have been stuck in the International Space Station (ISS) since June after a raft of technical hiccups.

The delayed mission has reached the space station, the hatch has opened and soon the two astronauts who've been "stuck" in space can return home.