SpaceX Rescues Stranded NASA Astronauts

The crew aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule sent to retrieve two astronauts stranded in space for nine months were greeted by an 'alien' as they docked at the International Space Station (ISS).

NASA astronaut Nick Hague, who was already aboard the ISS, gave the incoming crew an extraterrestrial welcome by donning an alien mask for their arrival.

The SpaceX Dragon crew successfully reached the station after taking off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

Their mission was to deliver four new astronauts to the ISS and bring home stranded crew member Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore.

Wilmore swung open the space station's hatch and then rang the ship's bell as the new arrivals floated in one by one and were greeted with hugs and handshakes.

"It was a wonderful day. Great to see our friends arrive," Williams told Mission Control after their arrival.

Williams and Wilmore will spend the next few days helping their incoming colleagues become acclimated with the space station.

The two astronauts, along with Hague and cosmonauts Aleksandr Gorbunov, can then begin their return to Earth aboard the SpaceX Dragon Capsule as early as Wednesday.

The pair have been stranded in orbit since June 5, with SpaceX owner Elon Musk and others claiming they were left on the ISS for political reasons, although this has been refuted by the astronauts.

They have been aboard the ISS with NASA astronauts Hague and Don Pettit and Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and Aleksandr Gorbunov.

The incoming Crew-10 is composed of NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan's Takuya Onishi, and Russia's Kirill Pesko.

The Dragon capsule docked at the ISS just after 12:04am ET after a more than 28 hour journey.

Williams and Wilmore were only expected to be in orbit for eight days.

But the Boeing Starliner capsule which delivered them to the ISS encountered so many problems that NASA insisted it come back empty, leaving its test pilots behind to wait for a SpaceX lift.

The new crew from the SpaceX capsule will spend the next six months at the space station, which is considered the normal stint.

Their arrival comes after several setbacks for the relief mission, the most recent of which saw the flight scrapped at the eleventh hour on Wednesday, due to a hydraulic system issue with the Falcon 9 rocket.

NASA had moved up the return mission by two weeks after after President Trump told Musk to 'go get' Williams and Wilmore.

Before the president's request, the astronauts were not coming back earlier than March 26.

'It's been a roller coaster for them, probably a little bit more so than for us,' Williams said of her family.

The mission became a flashpoint during the election after Trump and Musk claimed the astronauts had been left languishing in space for political reasons.

Musk said he offered to bring the astronauts home eight months ago, but the Biden Administration shot it down because it would've made Trump 'look good' in the presidential race against former vice president Kamala Harris.

During a recent press briefing, Ken Bowersox, associate administrator of the NASA's Space Operations Mission Directorate, admitted that there 'may have been conversations' in the Biden White House about delaying the return for political optics of having Trump's most famous donor save the day, but he was not part of the discussions.

The Crew-10 launch occurred as Wilmore and Williams were asleep in their daily schedule on the station, Dina Contellam deputy manager of NASA's ISS program, told reporters after the launch.

Having seen their mission turn into a normal NASA rotation to the ISS, Wilmore and Williams have been doing scientific research and conducting routine maintenance with the other five astronauts.

Williams told reporters earlier this month that she was looking forward to returning home to see her two dogs and family including her husband Michael and mom Bonnie.

Wilmore has two teenage daughters who he shares with wife Deanna.

'We've had so many changes and it's a bit mentally exhausting,' his daughter Daryn told E! News about the ongoing saga.