Two US space astronauts who had spent over 280 days on board the International Space Station separated from the ISS on early Tuesday morning, beginning their much-awaited journey home.
The bigger picture: Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams have been in a space holding pattern hundreds of miles away from the surface of the Earth after joining the ISS in June 2024 as part of the Boeing Starliner’s first crewed flight test.
- Following technical problems and safety issues delayed their return flight, the drama of the “stranded” astronauts — who describe themselves as not being “stranded, abandoned” or “stuck” — has reached across the nation and placed the duo’s tale within the political sphere.
- Astronauts have stayed on the space station for more than nine months (NASA astronaut Frank Rubio logged more than a year), but the surprise duration of their layover — initially set to be a matter of days — sent skyward gazes.
Crew9 is officially Earth bound.
Following a stint of living and working on the orbiting laboratory, NASA Astronauts Nick Hague, Butch Wilmore, and Suni Williams, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov safely undocked from the International Space Station at 1:05 a.m. ET, Tuesday, March 18.
NASA’s SpaceX #Crew9 is scheduled to splash down off the coast of Florida around 5:57 p.m. ET Tuesday, March 18, with NASA+ coverage beginning at 4:45 p.m. ET.
Catch it live: https://go.nasa.gov/4bTz5PS
Posted by NASA’s Johnson Space Center on Monday, March 17, 2025
Behind the news: The SpaceX Dragon undocked from the space station at 1:05am Tuesday ET.
- In addition to Williams and Wilmore, the capsule has NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos space agency’s Aleksandr Gorbunov, who took the spacecraft to the ISS in September.
- The entire journey is estimated to take approximately 17 hours to splashdown.
Catch up fast: NASA.in August said it was preparing to send the pair home on a SpaceX spacecraft — but not until next year.
- That flight was postponed until this month.
- Williams and Wilmore were incorporated into Expedition 72, NPR reports. They’ve done research and spacewalks, with Williams establishing a new record for cumulative spacewalking time by a female astronaut.
- A four-member replacement crew arrived earlier on Sunday, where they were welcomed with hugs from the others already on board the ISS.
Friction point: President Trump accused the Biden administration of having “virtually abandoned” the duo in space in January, a charge Trump ally and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk supported.
- The astronauts dismissed being abandoned, with Wilmore stating in an interview with CNN, “That’s been the story from day one: stuck, abandoned, stranded — and I get it. We both get it.”
- He added, “But that is, again, not what our human spaceflight program is about. We don’t feel abandoned, we don’t feel stuck, we don’t feel stranded.”