NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore broke their silence on being stranded at the International Space Station for nine months before being brought back down to Earth earlier this month.

“My first thought was, we just got to pivot, right?,” Williams said during an interview with FOX News' America's Newsroom. “I was like, ‘OK, let’s make the best of it.’ We planned, we trained that we’d be there for some part of a time, so we were ready to just jump into it and take on the tasks that were given to us.”

Willmore said he missed most of his daughter's senior year of high school while being stranded in space, but weighed "national goals" over his own feelings during the ordeal.

“It’s not about me, it’s not about my feelings,” he said via FOX News. “It’s about what this human space flight program is about. It’s our national goals.

“I have to wrap myself, my mind, around ‘what does the nation need out of me right now?’ Did I think about not being there for my daughter’s high school year, of course… certainly, deal with the personal side of it, but I can’t let that interfere with what I’m called to do.”

Williams, 59, and Wilmore, 62, arrived in Florida on the SpaceX Crew Dragon Capsule 'Freedom,' on March 18. The two astronauts were initially scheduled to spend 10 days at the ISS in June and return home with fellow American Nick Hague and Russian Aleksandr Gorbunov following the completion of their Crew 9 million, however, got stranded when their Boeing Starliner capsule suffered leaks and mechanical issues, forcing NASA to return the craft without anyone aboard.

SpaceX served as the only backup available to return the two astronauts and was scheduled to launch after Crew 10 arrived this past weekend to relieve Wilmore and Williams of their ISS duties. SpaceX founder Elon Musk, a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump and the leader of his newly launched Department of Government Efficiency, offered a "huge note of appreciation" to the president "for prioritizing and expediting the return."

The billionaire had previously blamed former President Joe Biden for the two astronauts not returning sooner, claiming plans were shelved and that the mission had been marred by political mudslinging, which Biden administration officials have denied. Wilmore and Williams spent an estimated 285 days in space, which is the sixth-longest NASA spaceflight mission.

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