NASA’s two stuck astronauts headed back to Earth with SpaceX on Tuesday to close out a dramatic marathon mission that began with a bungled Boeing test flight more than nine months ago.

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams bid farewell to the International Space Station — their home since last spring — departing aboard a SpaceX capsule alongside two other astronauts. The capsule undocked shortly after 1 a.m. Eastern and aimed for a splashdown off the Florida coast around 6 p.m. Eastern, weather permitting.

The two expected to be gone just a week or so after launching on Boeing’s new Starliner crew capsule on June 5. So many problems cropped up on the way to the space station that NASA eventually sent Starliner back empty and transferred the test pilots to SpaceX, pushing their homecoming into February. Then SpaceX capsule issues added another month’s delay.

Sunday’s arrival of their relief crew meant Wilmore and Williams could finally leave. NASA cut them loose a little early, given the iffy weather forecast later this week. They checked out with NASA’s Nick Hague and Russia’s Alexander Gorbunov, who arrived in their own SpaceX capsule last fall with two empty seats reserved for the Starliner duo.

“We’ll miss you, but have a great journey home,” NASA’s Anne McClain called out from the space station as the capsule pulled away 260 miles (418 kilometers) above the Pacific.

Their plight captured the world’s attention, giving new meaning to the phrase “stuck at work.” While other astronauts had logged longer spaceflights over the decades, none had to deal with so much uncertainty or see the length of their mission expand by so much.

Wilmore and Williams quickly transitioned from guests to full-fledged station crew members, conducting experiments, fixing equipment and even spacewalking together. With 62 hours over nine spacewalks, Williams set a record: the most time spent spacewalking over a career among female astronauts.

Both had lived on the orbiting lab before and knew the ropes, and brushed up on their station training before rocketing away. Williams became the station’s commander three months into their stay and held the post until earlier this month.

Their mission took an unexpected twist in late January when President Donald Trump asked SpaceX founder Elon Musk to accelerate the astronauts’ return and blamed the delay on the Biden administration. The replacement crew’s brand new SpaceX capsule still wasn’t ready to fly, so SpaceX subbed it with a used one, hurrying things along by at least a few weeks.

Even in the middle of the political storm, Wilmore and Williams continued to maintain an even keel at public appearances from orbit, casting no blame and insisting they supported NASA’s decisions from the start.

NASA hired SpaceX and Boeing after the shuttle program ended, in order to have two competing U.S. companies for transporting astronauts to and from the space station until it’s abandoned in 2030 and steered to a fiery reentry. By then, it will have been up there more than three decades; the plan is to replace it with privately run stations so NASA can focus on moon and Mars expeditions.

Both retired Navy captains, Wilmore and Williams stressed they didn’t mind spending more time in space — a prolonged deployment reminiscent of their military days. But they acknowledged it was tough on their families.

Wilmore, 62, missed most of his younger daughter’s senior year of high school; his older daughter is in college. Williams, 59, had to settle for internet calls from space to her mother. They’ll have to wait until they’re off the SpaceX recovery ship and flown to Houston before the long-awaited reunion with their loved ones.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

• Melinda French Gates emphasizes that billionaires shouldn’t be seen as a monolith and that not every business titan needs a massive audience to demonstrate the value of their work. She also prioritized giving her children a grounded upbringing by having them use her maiden name in school and ensuring they experienced a sense of normalcy despite their family’s immense wealth.

Melinda French Gate’s ex-husband might be one of the most famous entrepreneurs on the planet, but she doesn’t believe that being a billionaire automatically consigns an individual to a certain stereotype.

President Trump’s inauguration demonstrated that something of an alliance was forming between some of the world’s richest men.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and head of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) stood beside Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, who himself was shoulder-to-shoulder with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Beside Bezos and his partner Lauren Sanchez was Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. Apple’s Tim Cook was also in attendance.

Notably missing from the line-up of Magnificent 7 bosses and founders was Gates, as well as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Nvidia founder Jensen Huang.

In the run-up to and days since Trump’s inauguration, some of the most powerful men on the planet have rallied around the White House. Others, like Gates, have met with the President but have also cautioned the Oval Office.

In a time of “masculine energy” at Meta and bromances between former Big Tech rivals, French Gates told Elle this week that billionaires shouldn’t be seen as a single entity.

When asked about the message being sent to the public by the coalition of tech titans, French Gates said: “I think it’s really important to not see billionaires as a monolith.

“And not all of them need to stand on a stage to talk about or to demonstrate what they’re doing.”

This might be news to the world’s richest man, Musk, who frequently found himself on stage during Trump’s presidential campaign.

More recently, Musk shared headline spots with Argentina’s President Javier Milei, who wielded a chainsaw on stage in Washington D.C.

French Gates drew criticism from Musk for her support of former President Biden, but isn’t alone in being the ex-wife of a billionaire denounced by the SpaceX founder.

Musk has also criticized the work of Mackenzie Scott, who was previously married to Bezos, calling aspects of her philanthropic work “concerning.”

French Gates’s philanthropic work focuses on supporting and empowering women and girls around the world, and added it’s important to have equality throughout every echelon of power.

She explained: “Men make certain decisions—not necessarily bad decisions, but decisions based on their lens on society, right?” 

Growing up with the Gates name

With Bill Gates worth an estimated $162 billion and French Gates worth an estimated $30 billion, it might have been easy for their children to lose sight of what reality looks like for the general public.

To make sure their children didn’t fall foul of seeing their lives as part of a billionaires club, French Gates established some practices to give her offspring a more normal childhood.

This began in elementary school, with her three children using her maiden name ‘French’ as their surname.

By middle school, her kids were old enough to pick the moniker they went under. French Gates revealed her eldest daughter, Jennifer, chose to use her father’s surname in middle school, adding “she felt she was ready to take that name on.”

The couple’s son, Rory, stuck with the surname French throughout middle and high school.

French Gates explained: “I just tried to keep them in the real world and point things out to them as much as possible. We had real discussions about how our family was different, but you shouldn’t think any more of yourself because of that.”

This included keeping billionaire tech titan Gates out of the limelight at the start of the academic year.

French Gates encouraged her former husband to do the school drop-off, commencing from the third week of term, so her children had time to settle in before their billionaire philanthropist father appeared at the bus line.

“We got about two weeks where we were just ‘the Frenches.’ People saw that we were normal,” she explained.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Taking recruiter calls in the office parking lot on the down-low is no longer among the most lucrative things you can do at work. The median pay bump notched by those switching jobs shrunk to 4.8% last month from a peak of 7.7% in early 2023, according to recently released data from the Atlanta Fed.

That means the premium for ditching your current employer over staying put has all but disappeared since the red-hot job market of 2022 and 2023.

• In February 2023, a job-ditcher got a median 7.7% raise over the year, compared to a 5.6% pay bump for someone staying put.
• Last month, those who remained in their jobs received a 4.6% annual raise, just .2% under someone posting about “an exciting new chapter” on LinkedIn.

Help not so wanted

Job-hopping ceasing to be a surefire way to enter a new tax bracket is a sign of a cooling economy in which employers are no longer on the poaching prowl.

It’s been extra rough on tech: Memes about $800k tech salaries and in-office back rubs are rapidly becoming so 2022. After layoffs swept through the industry in 2024, and software development vacancies hit a 5-year low last month, many tech job seekers are settling for pay cuts, according to the Wall Street Journal.

• People applying for senior tech roles have been hit the hardest as many companies have slashed their manager headcount.
• Meanwhile, only 45% of tech workers got a raise last year, compared to 55% in 2023, according to the job board Dice.

But some job hoppers in other industries are still cashing in. The WSJ reports that experienced banking pros joining a new bank are getting record pay premiums, as the industry scored unprecedented earnings last year.

Big picture: Fewer people are taking the leap toward a new employer. Less than 2.2% of workers switched jobs last month compared to 2.6% in June 2022, per government data. —SK

This report was originally published by Morning Brew.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com