Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore have returned to Earth after a nine-month stay on the International Space Station (ISS), a journey that took much longer than originally planned due to leaks and engine problems with the Boeing Starliner spacecraft that took them there.
Williams and Wilmore plummeted into the Gulf of Mexico in a SpaceX Dragon capsule at 5:57 p.m. ET on Tuesday, after a 17-hour journey from the ISS.
Their return marks the end of one of the strangest chapters in recent spaceflight history, thanks to problems that arose with the Boeing Starliner and the way SpaceX CEO Elon Musk politicized the astronauts’ return.
Williams and Wilmore first launched to the ISS in June 2024 on a mission that was crucial to Boeing’s attempt to compete with SpaceX. The aviation giant, along with SpaceX, won a contract in 2014 to send astronauts to the ISS for NASA with the goal of further delivering astronauts even further into the solar system.
SpaceX made its first crewed flight on the Crew Dragon spacecraft in 2020, during the first days of the COVID pandemic. Meanwhile, Boeing’s Starliner project was disrupted by cost overruns and delays.
The flight in June 2024 was supposed to help Boeing forget about all this. The goal was to send Williams and Wilmore to the ISS and then return them home after a short stay. But the Starliner ran into problems even before they docked at the ISS. After the astronauts finally climbed aboard, NASA and Boeing spent several weeks performing tests before deciding to bring the Starliner back without them.
NASA quickly began working with SpaceX on a plan to return Williams and Wilmore. After some hesitation, they decided to wait until early 2025 to bring the duo home so that the ISS would not be left without a crew.
However, in recent months, Musk has claimed (without providing any evidence) that he offered to bring the astronauts home earlier – and that former President Joe Biden rejected the offer because it would have helped his political rival Donald Trump.
A former NASA administrator and a deputy administrator under Biden said the space agency was not aware of any proposal. On Tuesday, CNN reported that senior White House officials also said they were not aware of any offer.
