WASHINGTON >> NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams returned to Earth in a SpaceX capsule on Tuesday with a soft splashdown off Florida’s coast, nine months after their faulty Boeing Starliner craft upended what was to be a week-long stay on the International Space Station.

The now famous ill-fated attempt to get Boeing’s Starliner capsule to begin ferrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station was a setback, but not a fatal blow to the program, NASA leaders said Tuesday.