TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (TNND) -- Space X's Crew-9 astronauts had some surprise visitors welcoming them home after splashing down Tuesday afternoon.

A pod of dolphins joined a fleet of recovery vessels inspecting the Crew-9's Dragon capsule, named Freedom, after it landed in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Tallahassee Florida at 5:57 p.m. EST.

"Wow! We got a cute little pod of dolphins, not just one or two," SpaceX engineer Kate Tice said during the NASA-SpaceX webcast.

A drone video obtained by NASA showed the pod of dolphins curiously circling the capsule.

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams completed their journey home Tuesday after a nearly one-week mission on a Boeing Starliner capsule turned into nine months in space.

Their return trip was delayed multiple times after their spacecraft encountered malfunctions with its thruster as well as leaking propulsion. NASA decided to send the Starliner back to Earth with no one on board, leaving Williams and Wilmore on the International Space Station (ISS).

On March 14, four astronauts headed to the ISS to help Wilmore and Williams journey back to Earth as part of a joint operation by SpaceX and NASA. The crew included astronauts Anne McClain, Nichole Ayers, Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov.

Once they touched down on Earth, the crew was safely assisted out of the 13-foot-wide capsule and carried out on stretchers to undergo a medical screening -- a standard practice for people returning from long-duration missions in space.