Watch: NASA Reveals New Plan to Return Stranded Astronauts to Earth

Sunita "Suni" Williams and Barry "Butch" Wilmore are still in space despite the recent launch of a return capsule from the International Space Station.

Even though the astronauts have been at the ISS since June -- when their Boeing Starliner experienced equipment failure, forcing NASA to extend their eight-day mission indefinitely -- they did not catch a ride back to Earth on the agency's SpaceX Crew-8 craft, which successfully touched down Oct. 25.

That's because the Crew-8 flight was already assigned to NASA's Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps as well as Russian cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, who had all been on the ISS since March -- approximately three months longer than Williams and Wilmore.

The four-person team was part of a regular crew rotation on the ISS and had long been assigned to the Crew-8 flight. In fact, their mission home had already been delayed several times due to bad weather around Florida, preventing the departure of the capsule.

Overall, they spent a total of 232 days aboard the space station.