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 deemed the Starliner too risky to carry astronauts back to Earth and sent the spacecraft home without its crew in September, leaving the two without a ride home. Now, the NASA astronauts are set to return on March 19 or 20, but they will make their return to Earth with SpaceX, aboard its Crew-9 return flight.

Stranded astronauts Barry 'Butch' Wilmore and Sunita 'Suni' Williams are nearing their return date, and have now revealed the hardest factor of their nine-month stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS).