The spacecraft carrying NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore splashed down Tuesday evening in the Gulf of Mexico after a 286-day odyssey that started with a harrowing technical problem that forced NASA to swap vehicles and extend the mission from about eight days to nine months.
Williams and Wilmore flew back to Earth with NASA’s Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, who together are known as Crew-9, in a SpaceX Dragon capsule.
“Crew-9 going home,” Hague said as the capsule undocked from the International Space Station early Tuesday.
The astronauts settled into the gulf off the coast of Florida under four parachutes in what NASA called “pristine” conditions shortly before 6 p.m. NASA moved up their return date by a day because it said the weather looked good Tuesday evening “ahead of less favorable weather conditions expected later in the week.”
The flight home came after Williams and Wilmore, both NASA veterans, orbited Earth more than 4,500 times, traveling more than 120 million miles on the orbiting laboratory at a speed of 17,500 mph, according to NASA.
The safe return marked an end to a saga that started when Williams and Wilmore approached the station June 6 in a test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. Several of the capsule’s thrusters used to orient the vehicle failed to fire properly, and NASA ultimately decided the craft was not safe to fly the astronauts home. Instead, the space agency decided to rely on SpaceX, which has been ferrying crews to the space station since 2020. Starliner came home empty, with the future of the program uncertain.
The mission spiraled into controversy when President Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk, who also runs SpaceX, claimed that Musk offered to bring the astronauts home early but was rebuffed by the Biden administration for political reasons. Top NASA officials, and even Wilmore and Williams, however, said that they were unaware of any plans to bring the astronauts home early.
SpaceX successfully launched a mission on March 14 to replace two NASA astronauts who have been stuck on the International Space Station for nine months. (Video: NASA)
The astronauts’ return came only after careful deliberation that had nothing to do with politics or the White House, officials from the space agency have said.
After Starliner suffered problems, NASA did look at a number of contingency options for getting the crew home, Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, said during a briefing this month. That included the possibility of sending up another capsule. But NASA quickly decided against it, he said.
“When it comes to adding on missions or bringing a capsule home early, those were always options, but we ruled them out pretty quickly, just based on how much money we’ve got in our budget and the importance of keeping crews on the International Space Station,” he said.
Steve Stich, who oversees NASA’s Commercial Crew program, said the schedule of spacecraft coming and going from the space station, not politics, dictated the timeline.
“It really was driven by a lot of other factors, and we were looking at this before some of those statements were made by the President and Mr. Musk,” he said.
Despite the problems Boeing has had with its Starliner capsule, which have cost the company $2 billion in cost overruns, NASA has said it needs the capsule as an option for the space agency’s astronauts.
At the moment, NASA is dependent on SpaceX to fly full, four-member crew contingents to the space station. If SpaceX should have a problem with its Falcon 9 rocket or Dragon spacecraft that forces them to stand down, the country would lose its ability to get astronauts to space. When the space shuttle retired in 2011, for example, NASA had to rely on Russia for nearly a decade before SpaceX started flying crews.
Boeing executives, however, have openly questioned whether the cost is worth it, and it’s unclear when Starliner might attempt to fly again. Boeing did not respond to a request for comment on the future of its capsule.
A replacement crew of four astronauts reached the space station early Sunday, paving the way for Crew-9’s return. Typically, NASA likes rotating crews to overlap on the orbiting laboratory for a few days so that the new astronauts can get up to speed on the station’s operations. “The updated return target continues to allow the space station crew members time to complete handover duties,” the space agency said.
While the trip to space was marred by technical problems, the 17-hour flight home appeared flawless. The Dragon capsule’s heat shield withstood temperatures that reached 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit. Plasma engulfed the capsule, leaving char marks and cutting off communications between the capsule and ground controllers for a few minutes before the four main parachutes deployed ahead of the capsule’s splashdown.
Throughout their mission, Wilmore, 62, and Williams, 59, said that they were happy to stay in space for longer than anticipated. Both are retired Navy captains with extensive experience in orbit.
“We came up prepared to stay long, even though we planned to stay short,” Wilmore said in a briefing from the ISS this month. “That’s what your nation’s human spaceflight program is all about — planning for unknown, unexpected contingencies.”
Over what became an unexpected mission that extended through summer, Thanksgiving and Christmas, the pair, who both celebrated birthdays while in space, were quickly thrown into the work of the space station, conducting science experiments and upkeep. Williams exited the station for two spacewalks, the eighth and ninth of her 27-year NASA career. She now holds the record for total spacewalking time by a female astronaut, 62 hours and 6 minutes, NASA said.
Williams said the delay has been harder on the families than on the astronauts.
“It’s been a roller coaster for them, probably a little bit more so than for us,” she said. “We’re here. We have a mission. We’re just doing what we do every day. And you know, every day is interesting because we’re up in space, and it’s a lot of fun. I think the hardest part is having the folks on the ground have to not know exactly when we’re coming back.”
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