In a news briefing following the landing, Nasa spokesperson Steve Stich said: "From a human perspective, all of us feel happy about the successful landing, but then there's a piece of us - all of us - that wish it would have been the way we had planned it.

NASA's two stuck astronauts are just a few weeks away from finally returning to Earth after nine months in space

During a news conference Tuesday, Wilmore said that while politics is part of life, it did not play into his and Williams' return, moved up a couple weeks thanks to a change in SpaceX capsules.