Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams are finally making their way back to Earth after an eight-day mission to space turned into a nine-month-long hiatus at the International Space Station.
Early Tuesday morning, the pair bid farewell to the International Space Station after a SpaceX capsule arrived Sunday to take them home, leaving a crew of replacement astronauts to man the station. Wilmore and Williams are expected to make a splashdown off the Florida coast around 6 p.m. Tuesday evening, after a roughly 17-hour journey.
Wilmore and Williams’s return to Earth was further expedited by NASA, which agreed to waive an overlap period in which the replacement crew and outgoing astronauts are typically at the station together.
SpaceX’s mission to rescue the stranded astronauts launched successfully on Friday after a previous attempt last week fell through due to a mechanical problem.
How long have the astronauts been in space?
Wilmore and Williams began their mission on June 5, 2024, expecting to be back on Earth eight days later.
The simple mission on the Boeing Starliner was to test the spacecraft’s capabilities as part of its first crewed launch. After a malfunction occurred during takeoff, NASA determined the astronauts returning on the spacecraft would be too dangerous.
The pair of astronauts have been at the International Space Station since their June launch. They even had to vote in the November 2024 election from space.
While they were in space for significantly longer than expected, the International Space Station was fully equipped to provide for the both of them. The space station is well stocked with food and water for up to six months between resupply missions.
“I don’t think I’m abandoned. I don’t think we’re stuck up here,” Williams told CBS News last month. “We’ve got food. We’ve got clothes. We have a ride home in case anything really bad does happen to the International Space Station.”
Coming in at 272 days in space, Williams and Wilmore have not matched the record for someone staying in the International Space Station. NASA astronaut Frankie Rubio stayed in the ISS for 371 days in 2023.
What caused the delayed return?
Shortly after arriving in space, NASA discovered that various malfunctions had occurred during launch, which it feared could be detrimental to a safe return on the spacecraft.
NASA identified helium leaks and problems with the reaction control thrusters on June 6 and decided after various tests and data collection that the crew would not use the Boeing Starliner to return to Earth.
“Spaceflight is risky, even at its safest and most routine. A test flight, by nature, is neither safe nor routine. The decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring Boeing’s Starliner home uncrewed is the result of our commitment to safety: our core value and our North Star,” then-NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in August.
The Boeing Starliner returned to Earth without its crew in September 2024.
How will they return to Earth?
When NASA announced it would not allow the crew to use the Boeing Starliner to return to Earth, officials also said that Wilmore and Williams would use the SpaceX Crew-9 mission to return in early 2025.
The SpaceX Crew-9 mission was originally set to have a four-person crew, but NASA adjusted it to a two-person launch crew to allow space for Wilmore and Williams to return. The mission launched with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov on Sept. 28, 2024, and has remained at the ISS since then.
NASA plans for the SpaceX Crew-9 mission to return once the SpaceX Crew-10 mission has docked to the orbital laboratory. The SpaceX Crew-10 mission is scheduled to launch on March 12, and reports suggest the Crew-9 mission could return as soon as March 19.
When they return, the astronauts will likely need months of rehabilitation to relearn how to walk and get used to Earth’s gravity, according to a report from the Daily Mail.
Did politics play a role in the incident?
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has alleged that politics played a role in the astronauts being left in space for so long, something officials from NASA during the Biden administration deny.
Musk, a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump, claimed he offered to bring back Wilmore and Williams earlier than the current timeline and that the Biden administration rejected the offer. He has said he believes the rejection was due to not wanting to give a Trump ally a win ahead of the 2024 election.
“There’s no way that they’re going to make anyone who’s supporting Trump look good,” Musk said on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. “We could have brought them back way sooner.”
Biden-era NASA officials have denied his assertion, and the stranded astronauts said they were unaware of any offer.
“It certainly did not come to my attention,” Nelson told the Washington Post. “There was no discussion of that whatsoever. Maybe he sent a message to some lower-level person.”
“What was offered, what was not offered, who it was offered to, how that process went — that’s information that we simply don’t have,” Wilmore said at a news conference Tuesday.
TRUMP TELLS ASTRONAUTS STRANDED IN SPACE: ‘WE’RE COMING UP TO GET YOU’
Trump offered his support to the stranded astronauts in remarks from the Oval Office on Thursday, attacking the Biden administration for not working more quickly to return them to Earth.
“We love you and we’re coming up to get you,” Trump said. “And you shouldn’t have been up there so long.”
