NASA’s Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore – who gained international attention as their planned short stay in space stretched into a nine-month, politically fraught mission – are finally heading home.
The astronauts climbed aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule alongside two teammates, NASA’s Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, and departed the International Space Station at 1:05 a.m. ET Tuesday before an expected splashdown return Tuesday afternoon.
Williams, Wilmore, Hague and Gorbunov are part of the Crew-9 mission, a routine staff rotation jointly operated by NASA and SpaceX. The Crew-9 capsule launched to the space station in September with Hague and Gorbunov riding alongside two empty seats reserved for Williams and Wilmore, who have been on the orbiting laboratory since last June, when their original ride – a Boeing Starliner spacecraft – malfunctioned.
Safely reaching Earth will conclude a trip that, for Williams and Wilmore, has garnered broad interest because of the unexpected nature of their extended stay in orbit and the dramatic turn of events that prevented them from returning home aboard the Boeing Starliner vehicle.
But the length of the duo’s stay in space is not record-breaking. Williams and Wilmore’s extended mission is expected to conclude after 286 days, which is still significantly shorter than the world record of 437 days in orbit held by the late Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov.
Williams, Wilmore, Hague and Gorbunov are on track to spend Tuesday morning and afternoon in orbit in the roughly 13-foot-wide (4-meter-wide), gumdrop-shaped SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. Gradually descending, the capsule will carry the astronauts from the space station, which orbits about 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth, toward the thick inner layer of our planet’s atmosphere.
MORE | After 9 months on board ISS, NASA astronauts to return home: A timeline
NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore stand together for a photo enroute to the launch pad at Space Launch Complex 41 Wednesday, June 5, 2024.
AP Photo/Chris O’Meara, File
Around 5 p.m. ET, the Crew Dragon capsule is expected to fire its engines to begin the final phase of the journey: reentry. This leg of the journey is considered the most dangerous of any flight home from space. The jarring physics of hitting the atmosphere while traveling more than 22 times the speed of sound routinely heats the exterior of returning spacecraft to more than 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,926 degrees Celsius) and can trigger a communication blackout.
After plunging toward home, the Crew Dragon spacecraft will then deploy two sets of parachutes in quick succession to further slow its descent. If all goes to plan, the capsule will decelerate from orbital speeds of more than 17,000 miles per hour (27,359 kilometers per hour) to less than 20 miles per hour (32 kilometers per hour) as the vehicle hits the ocean.
Williams, Wilmore, Hague and Gorbunov are slated to splash down off the coast of Florida as soon as 5:57 p.m. ET Tuesday – though the exact time and location are subject to change as mission controllers keep tabs on weather and the progress of the crew’s return trip.
After the vehicle hits the ocean, a SpaceX rescue ship waiting nearby will haul the spacecraft out of the water, and Williams and Wilmore will exit Dragon and take their first breaths of earthly air in nine months.
Last summer, NASA decided flying the two astronauts home aboard their Boeing Starliner capsule would be too risky, and the space agency opted to fold Williams and Wilmore into the International Space Station’s regular crew rotation. That call is why the pair are flying home with Hague and Gorbunov on SpaceX’s Crew-9 capsule.
Medical teams will evaluate the crew’s health, as is routine after astronauts return from space, before deciding next steps. Ultimately, the NASA crew members will return to their home base at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
A political drama unfurls
The Crew-9 team is returning home this week because NASA and SpaceX successfully launched the Crew-10 mission to orbit on Friday.
The four Crew-10 astronauts – who will take over operations on board the orbiting laboratory – docked with the space station just after midnight ET on Sunday.
NASA has maintained since last summer, when it announced Williams and Wilmore would join the Crew-9 team, that Crew-10 needed to be in place before the Starliner astronauts could leave orbit. That planning allowed NASA to keep the US-controlled portion of the space station fully staffed without needing to fly a separate, multimillion-dollar return mission for Williams and Wilmore. The United States jointly operates the space station with Russia, Japan, Canada and the participating countries of the European Space Agency.
The decision, however, has been the subject of apparent criticism from SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump, who have claimed Williams and Wilmore were abandoned by the Biden administration.
In posts about the matter on X, Musk has said SpaceX could have brought Williams and Wilmore home months ago, but an offer was denied for “political reasons.”
It’s not clear what that offer entailed or to whom it was offered.
A Biden-era senior NASA official told CNN that SpaceX never communicated such an offer to agency leadership – and the space agency likely would not have entertained the idea regardless.
If Musk had made the offer to someone outside NASA leadership, the source noted, “I’m sure they would have responded and said, ‘Well, that would cost us several $100 million extra that we don’t have for a new Dragon capsule and Falcon 9.'”
Musk has since said the offer was not made to NASA but was taken directly to the Biden White House, which “refused to allow it,” according to a post he shared on X.
It’s unclear why such a deal would have been discussed with the White House, which does not typically have direct involvement in NASA crew assignments or space station staffing matters.
A former senior Biden White House official, however, also told CNN that they never heard of such an offer from Musk or SpaceX.
“I’m not aware of any communications that came to the White House, whether directly or indirectly, along the way – as there was a close team working space policy issues at the White House,” the source said.
The person added that, if SpaceX or Musk had offered to fly a separate Crew Dragon mission to retrieve the astronauts, “there’d be foreign policy implications, there would be budgetary implications, space policy implications” that would necessitate the White House’s awareness.
But, the source added, “we’re not aware of any (offer.)”
“If they (Musk or SpaceX) had contacted NASA, NASA would certainly have reached out to us and let us know,” the source said. “And if they would have contacted the White House, we would let NASA know as well.”
When asked about the matter during a remote news conference from the International Space Station on March 4, Wilmore said he was not familiar with what offer may have been made, but said of Musk’s statements, “I believe him.”
When asked about the matter Friday, Sarah Walker, SpaceX’s director of Dragon mission management, also said she was not involved in the conversations referenced in Musk’s social media posts.
“What I do know from almost 15 years of working with this exact team, with commercial crew and ISS, is that NASA is always looking at multiple options – every option available for any operation that they may go do – and then many contingency options for when the unexpected inevitably happens,” Walker said.
A history of extended stays in space
Williams and Wilmore’s mission has been the subject of nearly constant speculation and scrutiny.
The astronauts have repeatedly sought to quash narratives that they were “abandoned,” “stuck” or “stranded.”
“That’s been the narrative from day one: stranded, abandoned, stuck – and I get it, we both get it,” Wilmore told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in February. “Help us change the narrative, let’s change it to: prepared and committed despite what you’ve been hearing. That’s what we prefer.”
Williams has also faced a torrent of tabloid speculation about her appearance – despite NASA’s repeated statements that she was healthy and had not lost weight.
But despite the outsize interest in Williams and Wilmore’s mission, a number of astronauts have had their stays in space extended without warning.
Notably, NASA astronaut Frank Rubio had been slated for a six-month mission at the International Space Station after he arrived aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in September 2022. He instead logged a total of 371 days in space following the discovery that his spacecraft sprang a coolant leak. The Russian space agency launched a replacement Soyuz spacecraft for Rubio and his cosmonaut crewmates several months later.
Upon his return to Earth in September 2023, Rubio’s stay set a new record for the longest an American astronaut has ever spent in microgravity. He also became the first American to log an entire calendar year in orbit.
Dina Contella, NASA’s deputy manager of the International Space Station program, sought to put Williams and Wilmore’s extended stay in perspective with other missions during a news conference on Friday.
“There have been many crew members who’ve been on orbit longer than (Williams and Wilmore’s stay), and so we don’t see any need for any special precautions” after splashdown, Contella said. “Like any astronauts coming back, there’s an acclimation period and so that’ll vary by crew member.”
Astronauts returning from long-duration stays in space routinely exit their spacecraft on stretchers as their bodies need time to adjust to feeling Earth’s gravity. Williams and Wilmore have extensive prior spaceflight experience, so they know to expect to spend a couple months readapting.
If NASA identifies any pressing medical concerns, the space agency can ferry the Crew-9 team members to a nearby hospital in Florida after splashdown, as was the case after the Crew-8 team returned from a nearly eight-month stay in space.
All four astronauts on board that mission later reported they were healthy, if still readjusting, after spending months in weightlessness.
“The weight and the heaviness of things just is surprising,” Crew-8 astronaut Janette Epps said of her experience returning to Earth last year. “(I’ve been) laying any chance I got. But you have to move, and you have to exercise every day, otherwise you don’t get those gains. You have to move regardless of how exhausted you feel.”
How Williams and Wilmore spent their days
Despite the unexpectedly long stay, Williams and Wilmore have characterized their extra time in space as a bonus that they were well-prepared for, thanks to their deep experience as veteran astronauts.
“This is my happy place,” Williams said in September. “I love being up here in space. It’s just fun. You know, every day you do something that’s work … (but) you can do it sideways, so it adds a little different perspective.
“Eventually we want to go home,” she added, “because we left our families a little while ago, but we have a lot to do while we’re up here.”
Before taking off aboard the Boeing Starliner capsule for its first crewed test flight last June, Williams and Wilmore were fully trained to join the space station staff – so they were ready for the scenario that ultimately unfolded as they embarked upon their mission.
The duo has engaged in routine daily tasks ever since. Williams even took over as space station commander, and both astronauts conducted spacewalks to carry out ISS maintenance.
During a March 4 news conference from space, Williams said she will miss “everything” about being in space.
“This has been Butch and my third flight to the International Space Station,” she said. “I think just the fact that we’re living up here in this very unique place gives you an amazing perspective – not only (with the view) out the window, obviously, but also just on how to solve problems, and I don’t want to lose that spark of inspiration.”
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