NASA astronauts head home after 9 months stranded at International Space Station

Thomson Reuters

· Posted: Mar 18, 2025 5:36 AM EDT | Last Updated: 11 minutes ago

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams departed the International Space Station aboriginal connected Tuesday greeting successful a SpaceX capsule for a long-awaited travel backmost to Earth, 9 months aft their faulty Boeing Starliner trade upended what was to beryllium a astir week-long trial mission.

Wilmore and Williams, 2 seasoned NASA astronauts and retired U.S. Navy trial pilots, strapped wrong their Crew Dragon spacecraft on with 2 different astronauts and undocked from the orbiting laboratory astatine 1:05 a.m. ET, embarking connected a 17-hour travel to Earth.

The four-person crew, formally portion of NASA's Crew-9 astronaut rotation mission, is scheduled for a splashdown disconnected Florida's seashore aboriginal connected Tuesday astatine 5:57 p.m. ET.

Wilmore and Williams' homecoming caps an extremity to an unusual, drawn-out ngo filled with uncertainty and method troubles that person turned a uncommon lawsuit of NASA's contingency readying — as good arsenic failures of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft — into a planetary and governmental spectacle.

WATCH | Stranded astronauts hole to instrumentality location aft months stranded successful space:

The astronaut brace had launched into abstraction arsenic Starliner's archetypal unit successful June for what was expected to beryllium an eight-day trial mission. But issues with Starliner's propulsion strategy led to cascading delays successful their instrumentality home, culminating successful a NASA determination past twelvemonth to person them instrumentality a SpaceX trade backmost this twelvemonth arsenic portion of the agency's unit rotation schedule.

The ngo has captured the attraction of U.S. President Donald Trump, who upon taking bureau successful January, called for a quicker instrumentality of Wilmore and Williams and alleged without grounds that erstwhile president Joe Biden "abandoned" them connected the ISS for governmental reasons.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, a adjacent advisor to Trump, echoed his telephone for an earlier return. SpaceX's Crew Dragon is the United States' lone orbital-class unit spacecraft, which Boeing had hoped its Starliner would vie with earlier the ngo with Wilmore and Williams threw its improvement aboriginal into uncertainty.

The astronauts volition beryllium flown to their unit quarters astatine the abstraction agency's Johnson Space Centre in Houston for respective days of wellness checks, per regular for astronaut returns, earlier NASA formation surgeons o.k. they tin spell location to their families.

Living successful abstraction for months tin impact the quality assemblage successful aggregate ways, from musculus atrophy to imaginable imaginativeness impairment.

Upon splashing down, Wilmore and Williams volition person logged 286 days successful abstraction — longer than the mean six-month ISS ngo length, but acold abbreviated of U.S. grounds holder Frank Rubio. His continuous 371 days successful abstraction ending successful 2023 was the unexpected effect of a coolant leak connected a Russian spacecraft.

Williams, capping her 3rd abstraction flight, volition person tallied 608 cumulative days successful space, the 2nd astir for immoderate U.S. astronaut aft Peggy Whitson's 675 days. Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko acceptable the satellite grounds past twelvemonth astatine 878 cumulative days.

WATCH | Why getting Wilmore and Williams location became progressively complicated: 

Swept up successful NASA's regular astronaut rotation schedule, Wilmore and Williams could not statesman their instrumentality to Earth until their replacement unit arrived, successful bid to support capable U.S. staffing levels, according to NASA.

Their replacements arrived connected Friday nighttime — four astronauts arsenic portion of NASA's Crew-10 ngo concisely enactment the station's headcount astatine 11.

"We came prepared to enactment long, adjacent though we planned to enactment short," Wilmore told reporters from abstraction earlier this month, adding that helium did not judge NASA's determination to support them connected the ISS until Crew-10's accomplishment had been affected by politics.

"That's what your nation's quality abstraction formation program's each about," helium said, "planning for unknown, unexpected contingencies. And we did that."

Wilmore and Williams person been doing technological probe and conducting regular attraction with the station's different 5 astronauts. Williams had performed 2 six-hour spacewalks for attraction extracurricular the ISS, including 1 with Wilmore.

The ISS, astir 409 kilometres in altitude, is simply a shot field-sized probe laboratory that has been housed continuously by planetary crews of astronauts for astir 25 years — a cardinal level of subject diplomacy managed chiefly by the U.S. and Russia.

Williams told reporters earlier this period that she was looking guardant to returning location to spot her 2 dogs and family.

"It's been a roller coaster for them, astir apt a small spot much truthful than for us," she said.