Two stranded NASA astronauts, Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore, are just a few weeks away from finally returning to Earth after spending nine months in space.
During a NASA news conference livestreamed from the International Space Station (ISS) on March 4, 2024, astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams, and Butch Wilmore discussed their return to Earth.
The Crew-9 astronauts will leave the space station when their replacements, Crew-10, arrive. During the conference, Nick Hague, who joined the ISS in September 2024, said Crew-10 will arrive in “a few short days.”
“I think as most of you know there was a series of decisions that was made in July 2024 and August 2024 to balance the safe return of Butch and Sunny along with continuing the ISS mission,” Hague continued. “One of those decisions was to modify the complement of Crew-9.”
Hague emphasized the crew’s strong belief in scientific exploration, stating that the ability to make a positive impact for all of humanity allows the astronauts to “take risks of putting yourself on top of a rocket and launching into space.”
Williams described the unexpected timeline change as a “roller coaster”, not so much for the astronauts, but for the families.
“Every day is interesting because we’re up in space and it’s a lot of fun, so I think the hardest part is having the folks on the ground have to not know exactly when we’re coming back,” Williams said.During the news conference, Wilmore stated that while politics is part of life, it did not affect their return.
“We came up prepared to stay long, even though we planned to stay short,” Wilmore said. That’s what we do in human space flight – planning for unknown unexpected contingencies and we did that. That’s why we float right into Crew-9, and it was a somewhat of a seamless transition because we had planned ahead for it.”
On January 29, 2025, US President Donald Trump asked Elon Musk to “go get” the two “brave astronauts who have been virtually abandoned in space.” In response, Musk said that SpaceX “will do so”, adding that it is “terrible that the Biden administration left them there so long.”
During the conference, Wilmore said that Musk’s comment about bringing the astronauts back to Earth, “is absolutely factual”. However, the astronaut added that having “no information on what was offered”.
The astronauts are now set to return to Earth on a SpaceX capsule instead of the Starliner spacecraft. Wilmore noted that NASA teams had been meeting for the last three months to review the system of the SpaceX capsule.
He said: “If they had said to return on Starliner, then we would have been happy to return on Starliner, but that was not the case.”
The astronauts have been on the ISS since June 2024. They were meant to return to Earth after a week-long mission back in June 2024, but technical problems with their Boeing Starliner capsule prolonged their stay for seven months.
