WASHINGTON: NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams returned to Earth in a SpaceX capsule on Tuesday with a soft splashdown off Florida鈥檚 coast, nine months after their faulty Boeing Starliner craft upended what was to be a week-long stay on the International Space Station.
Their return caps a protracted space mission that was fraught with uncertainty and technical troubles, turning a rare instance of NASA鈥檚 contingency planning 鈥� and the latest failures of Starliner 鈥� into a global and political spectacle.
Wilmore and Williams, two veteran NASA astronauts and retired US Navy test pilots, had launched into space as Starliner鈥檚 first crew in June for what was expected to be an eight-day test mission. But issues with Starliner鈥檚 propulsion system led to cascading delays to their return home, culminating in a NASA decision to fold them into its crew rotation schedule and return them on a SpaceX craft this year.
On Tuesday morning, Wilmore and Williams strapped inside their Crew Dragon spacecraft along with two other astronauts and undocked from the ISS at 1.05 a.m. ET (0505 GMT) to embark on a 17-hour trip to Earth.
The four-person crew, formally part of NASA鈥檚 Crew-9 astronaut rotation mission, plunged through Earth鈥檚 atmosphere, using its heatshield and two sets of parachutes to slow its orbital speed of 17,000 mph (27,359 kph) to a soft 17 mph at splashdown, which occurred at 5:57 p.m. ET some 50 miles off Florida鈥檚 Gulf Coast under clear skies.
鈥淲hat a ride,鈥� NASA astronaut Nick Hague, the Crew-9 mission commander inside the Dragon capsule, told mission control moments after splashing down. 鈥淚 see a capsule full of grins, ear to ear.鈥�
The astronauts will be flown on a NASA plane to their crew quarters at the space agency鈥檚 Johnson Space Center in Houston for a few days of routine health checks before NASA flight surgeons say they can go home to their families.
鈥淭hey will get some well-deserved time off, well-deserved time with their families,鈥� NASA鈥檚 Commercial Crew Program chief Steve Stich told reporters after the splashdown. 鈥淚t鈥檚 been a long time for them.鈥�
Political spectacle
The mission captured the attention of US President Donald Trump, who upon taking office in January called for a quicker return of Wilmore and Williams and alleged, without evidence, that former President Joe Biden 鈥渁bandoned鈥� them on the ISS for political reasons.
NASA acted on Trump鈥檚 demand by moving Crew-9鈥檚 replacement mission up sooner, the agency鈥檚 ISS chief Joel Montalbano said Tuesday. The agency had swapped a delayed SpaceX capsule for one that would be ready sooner and sped through its methodical safety review process to heed the president鈥檚 call.
Trump told Fox News on Tuesday that Wilmore and Williams will visit the Oval Office after they recover from their mission.
Wilmore earlier this month told reporters on a call from the ISS that he did not believe NASA鈥檚 decision to keep them on the ISS until Crew-10鈥檚 arrival had been affected by politics under the Biden administration.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, a close adviser to Trump, had echoed Trump鈥檚 call for an earlier return, adding the Biden administration spurned a SpaceX offer to provide a dedicated Dragon rescue mission last year.
NASA officials have said the two astronauts had to remain on the ISS to maintain adequate staffing levels and it did not have the budget or the operational need to send a dedicated rescue spacecraft. Crew Dragon flights cost between $100 million to $150 million.
Crew Dragon is the only US spacecraft capable of flying people in orbit. Boeing had hoped Starliner would compete with the SpaceX capsule before the mission with Wilmore and Williams threw its development future into uncertainty.
Stich said on Tuesday that Starliner might need to fly another uncrewed flight 鈥� which would be its third such mission and fourth test overall 鈥� before it routinely carries US astronauts.
Boeing, which congratulated the astronauts鈥� return on X, did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
286 days in space
The ISS, about 254 miles in altitude, is a football field-sized research lab that has been housed continuously by international crews of astronauts for nearly 25 years, a key platform of science diplomacy managed primarily by the US and Russia.
Swept up in NASA鈥檚 routine astronaut rotation schedule, Wilmore and Williams worked on roughly 150 science experiments aboard the station until their replacement crew launched last week.
The pair logged 286 days in space on the mission 鈥� longer than the average six-month ISS mission length, but far short of US record holder Frank Rubio, whose 371 days in space ending in 2023 were the unexpected result of a coolant leak on a Russian spacecraft.
Living in space for months can affect the human body in multiple ways, from muscle atrophy to possible vision impairment.
Williams, capping her third spaceflight, has tallied 608 cumulative days in space, the second most for any US astronaut after Peggy Whitson鈥檚 675 days. Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko set the world record last year at 878 cumulative days.
鈥淲e came prepared to stay long, even though we planned to stay short,鈥� Wilmore told reporters from space earlier this month.
鈥淭hat鈥檚 what your nation鈥檚 human spaceflight program鈥檚 all about,鈥� he said. 鈥淧lanning for unknown, unexpected contingencies. And we did that.鈥�