The Boeing Starliner spacecraft successfully completed its uncrewed flight back to Earth, NASA announced overnight. The return ended the Starliner’s most recent flight test months later than intended and leaves its original crew, NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Suni Williams, aboard the International Space Station until next year.

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.

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.