Two NASA astronauts who have been stranded at the International Space Station since June are officially scheduled to return home in March following a request from President Donald Trump to billionaire and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to expedite plans to bring the astronauts home.
Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore arrived at the International Space Station in June 2024 for what was initially planned for a week-long trip on a Boeing Starliner flight.
The spacecraft, however, returned to Earth in September without Williams and Wilmore (pictured here) after NASA decided the flight home was too risky given a number of mechanical issues – including helium leaks and propulsion issues – the craft experienced during the arrival mission.
The two were planning to fly back on a spacecraft NASA was working on with SpaceX in December, however, NASA announced that the mission would be delayed until a date “no earlier than late March 2025.”
Last month, Trump asked Musk to seek ways to expedite SpaceX’s existing plans with NASA to bring Williams and Wilmore home prior to NASA’s deadline of late March, leading to Tuesday’s announcement by NASA that the two astronauts – known as Crew-9 – will return on a craft called Endurance.
“NASA and SpaceX are accelerating the target launch and return dates for the upcoming crew rotation missions to and from the International Space Station. The agency’s Crew-10 launch now is targeting Wednesday, March 12, pending mission readiness and completion of the agency’s certification of flight readiness process. The Crew-9 mission is planned for return to Earth following a several day handover period with the newly arrived Crew-10 expedition crew,” NASA said.
NASA said the earlier launch opportunity was made possible due to mission management adjusting the agency’s original plan to fly a new Dragon spacecraft for the mission and instead opting for the previously flown Endurance craft.
Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov and NASA astronaut Nick Hague will join Williams and Wilmore on the return flight which will return to Earth at the splashdown sites off the coast of Florida.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
I’m happy, of course. But I always assumed there was a certain amount of redundancy built into our space program that no one would be stuck in space for months and months. I mean, what if the space station started leaking oxygen or something and we had to get those people down in a hurry. Is there no plan?