Returning NASA Astronauts Met by Dolphins off Florida Coast: ‘Mother Earth Sent a Welcome Home Party’

NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore finally returned to Earth on Tuesday evening after spending an unexpected nine extra months aboard the International Space Station — and were greeted by dolphins when their capsule splashed down.

The astronauts made their reentry aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule alongside Crew-9 mission members Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. The capsule undocked from the ISS at 1:05 a.m. EDT before making its dramatic splashdown off the Florida coast.

As CNN anchor Jake Tapper covered the moment rescue divers prepared to recover the capsule, he paused in surprise as dolphins were seen circling in the water.

We’re seeing – it looks like there are… is that a pod of dolphins on the left side of the screen? That’s unbelievable. There’s a pod of dolphins. A pod of dolphins have just come by. That is, I couldn’t even believe it when I saw that… That’s… I mean, this is why there’s no place like home.

As former NASA astronaut Jack Fischer continued to explain in detail on-air how the recovery team would assist the astronauts he stopped talking mid-sentence as the dolphins surfaced and dived playfully around the capsule: “Oh my gosh, that’s so cool. You like how do you not…”

“Mother Earth sent a welcome home party of a pod of dolphins. It’s pretty – it’s pretty incredible and magical in its way,” Tapper added.

One by one, the astronauts were helped out of the spacecraft. Wilmore, leaving the craft, capped off the dramatic return with a pair of gloved thumbs-ups.

Watch above via CNN.