NEW DELHI, March 19: NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams made their return to Earth on Wednesday, completing a dramatic and extended space mission. They safely splashed down in a SpaceX capsule off Florida’s coast, nearly nine months after their mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS) was initially disrupted by issues with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. Their return caps a mission that, due to technical failures and delays, turned into a rare instance of NASA’s contingency planning in action.
Wilmore and Williams, both veteran NASA astronauts and retired U.S. Navy test pilots, launched into space in June as the first crew aboard Starliner. The mission was initially supposed to last just eight days as a test flight. However, problems with Starliner’s propulsion system led to a series of delays. These technical difficulties forced NASA to adjust its plans, and eventually, the astronauts were folded into the Crew-9 rotation, where they returned on a SpaceX capsule.
On Tuesday morning, Wilmore and Williams, along with two other astronauts, boarded their Crew Dragon spacecraft and undocked from the ISS at 1:05 a.m. ET (0505 GMT) to begin a 17-hour journey back to Earth. The four-person crew, formally part of NASA’s Crew-9 astronaut rotation mission, descended from orbit, utilizing the spacecraft’s heat shield and parachutes to slow their speed from 17,000 mph (27,359 kph) to a soft 17 mph. Their splashdown occurred at 3.27 am IST, some 50 miles off Florida’s Gulf Coast, under clear skies.
“What a ride,” said NASA astronaut Nick Hague, the Crew-9 mission commander, as he spoke to mission control after the splashdown. “I see a capsule full of grins, ear to ear.”
The astronauts will be flown to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston for health checks before they are cleared to reunite with their families. “They will get some well-deserved time off, well-deserved time with their families,” said NASA’s Commercial Crew Program chief Steve Stich.
The mission attracted attention from various political figures, particularly U.S. President Donald Trump. Upon taking office, Trump had called for a quicker return of Wilmore and Williams, alleging, without evidence, that the previous administration had “abandoned” them on the ISS for political reasons. In response to Trump’s request, NASA expedited the replacement mission by moving Crew-9’s schedule up and modifying the spacecraft’s launch timeline.
Trump also suggested that the astronauts would visit the Oval Office after recovering from their mission. However, Wilmore, in a call from the ISS earlier this month, stated that he didn’t believe the decision to keep them aboard the ISS until the arrival of Crew-10 had been politically influenced under the Biden administration.
Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, who is a close advisor to Trump, echoed Trump’s calls for an earlier return, adding that the Biden administration had declined SpaceX’s offer to launch a dedicated Dragon rescue mission last year. However, NASA officials explained that the astronauts needed to remain on the ISS to maintain staffing levels, and the agency did not have the operational budget for a dedicated rescue mission, as Crew Dragon flights cost between $100 million to $150 million.
Boeing, which had hoped its Starliner spacecraft would compete with SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, faced a setback as the mission with Wilmore and Williams cast uncertainty on the future of Starliner. NASA officials stated that Starliner may need to complete another uncrewed test flight, which would be its third such mission, before it can routinely carry astronauts.
