Before and after photos of stranded astronauts back on Earth reveal shocking impact of being stuck in space for nine months

After a gruelling nine months in space, it might not come as a surprise that the NASA astronauts that were ‘stuck’ in orbit look a bit different.

On Tuesday (March 18), NASA astronauts Barry ‘Butch’ Wilmore and Sunita ‘Suni’ Williams were brought back home to Earth aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft after being ‘stranded’ on the International Space Station (ISS) since June last year.

Being away from home for so long is bound to have an adverse affect on their health, which NASA is clearly aware of as we saw the team taken away on stretchers before they could even take a single step on land after their splash landing off the Gulf Coast, near Tallahassee, Florida.Yet aside from breathing actual oxygen from the air, Wilmore and Williams are also feeling gravity against their bones for the first time in nine months, which comes with a long list of potential health worries in itself.

Issues range from ‘chicken legs’ and ‘baby feet’ to an increased risk of cancer, as per the Daily Mail, with the astronauts not quite out of the woods yet from health complications now they are on home soil.

While the pair are enduring a series of medical tests at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, some experts warn there are already some tell-tale signs that indicate a possible decline in their health.

Some onlookers claimed before and after photographs of Wilmore and Williams appeared to show them as gaunt and having perhaps lost weight while up in space.