Long-delayed Starliner astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams and two space station crewmates braced for a fiery plunge back to Earth on Tuesday to finally close out a repeatedly extended nine-and-a-half-month space odyssey.
Seventeen hours after undocking from the International Space Station, Wilmore, Williams, Crew 9 commander Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov were expected to splash down off Florida’s Gulf Coast near Tallahassee at 5:57 p.m. EDT.
This will close out a marathon mission for the two Starliner astronauts — a total of 286 days and 7 hours in space, covering 4,576 orbits and 121 million miles since their launch last June 5 on a mission that was originally expected to last about eight days. Their flight ranks sixth on the list of longest single NASA missions.
NASA
Hague and Gorbunov will have spent 171 days in orbit since their launch last September aboard the Crew 9 ferry ship.
All station astronauts spend two hours a day in orbit exercising to minimize bone and muscle loss in the weightlessness of space. Even so, Wilmore and Williams will face extensive rehabilitation over the next several weeks and months as their bodies re-adapt to the unfamiliar tug of gravity.
How do the astronauts return to Earth?
After bidding their ISS crewmates farewell, the returning astronauts floated into their Crew Dragon and undocked from the Harmony module’s space-facing port early Tuesday, at 1:05 a.m. EDT.
Starting at 5:11 p.m., the flight plan called for an automated seven-and-a-half-minute de-orbit thruster firing to slow the ship down for re-entry.
Twenty-seven minutes later, approaching the Florida Gulf Coast on a southwest-to-northeast trajectory, the Crew Dragon would reach the discernible atmosphere, enduring heat shield temperatures of more than 2,500 degrees as the spacecraft rapidly slows in the thickening air.
NASA
Nine minutes after entry, the Crew Dragon’s three main parachutes are set to unfurl for the capsule’s final descent to splashdown in the Gulf, south of Tallahassee, a few minutes before 6 p.m.
A SpaceX recovery ship will be stationed nearby to haul the spacecraft on board so the crew can be helped out of the Crew Dragon’s cabin and onto stretchers for initial medical checks.
From the recovery ship, all four Crew 9 fliers were to be flown to shore by helicopter. A NASA jet will be waiting to ferry them back to Houston and the Johnson Space Center for reunions with family members and more extensive medical checks.
CBS News will have live coverage of the astronauts’ return Tuesday starting at about 5:50 p.m. EDT. Watch in the video player above or download the free CBS News app for your mobile or streaming device.
Why were the astronauts stuck longer at the ISS?
Wilmore and Williams launched to the International Space Station last June 5 on the first piloted test flight of Boeing’s Starliner. The spacecraft suffered multiple propulsion system helium leaks and thruster problems during rendezvous with the space station, and NASA eventually decided to keep them on the station and to bring the Starliner down, without its crew, by remote control.
NASA launched the next crew rotation mission — Crew 9 — in September carrying just two crew members, Hague and Gorbunov, instead of four. Wilmore and Williams then joined the Crew 9 fliers aboard the ISS for a normal-duration six-month mission.
By keeping them in space as part of Crew 9, NASA was able to minimize the disruption to the ISS crew rotation sequence while maintaining a full slate of experiments and research.
NASA cleared the way for Crew 9’s return to Earth by launching four replacements — Crew 10 commander Anne McClain, pilot Nichole Ayers, cosmonaut Kirill Peskov and Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi — last Friday.
NASA
Normal practice calls for a five-day “handover” between crews so the new arrivals can be fully briefed on the ins and outs of station operations and maintenance. But in this case, handover was shortened to just one day to take advantage of predicted favorable splashdown weather in the Gulf.
The plight of the Starliner astronauts generated unprecedented interest during their extended stay in space, making headlines around the world and even prompting claims by President Trump that the crew had been “abandoned” in space by the Biden administration.
“This began when I asked Elon Musk to go up and get the abandoned astronauts, because the Biden administration was incapable of doing so,” he posted Monday on Truth Social. “They shamefully forgot about the astronauts, because they considered it to be a very embarrassing event for them.”
“Elon and I have taken on the project, sending up the SpaceX Dragon, which has successfully docked and, hopefully, while there is always danger involved in such a mission, they will soon be on their way home,” his post continued.
Mr. Trump did not mention that NASA originally planned to bring the crew home in February. But their mission was extended to March because SpaceX ran into problems with the Crew Dragon spacecraft being processed to carry the replacement Crew 10 into space.
The Crew 10 flight cleared the way for Crew 9 and the Starliner astronauts to come home this week — about two weeks earlier than the original Crew Dragon could have managed.
For his part, Musk backed up the president’s claims about the Biden administration “abandoning” the crew. Without offering any evidence, he said NASA turned down an offer to send up a mission specifically to get Wilmore and Williams and bring them back to Earth. No one at NASA has yet confirmed any such offer.
NASA managers have gone out of their way to avoid contradicting the president. But insiders say they are “livid” about the politicization of the Starliner crew’s mission.
Was this the longest any U.S. astronaut has stayed in space?
While 286 days is a long flight by normal NASA standards, it’s well short of the U.S. record for a single flight — 371 days, set by astronaut Frank Rubio in 2022-23.
Ironically, Rubio’s record was the result of another extended mission, this one the result of a major coolant leak in the Russian Soyuz he launched aboard. The Russians decided not to bring the crew down aboard their original spacecraft and instead launched a replacement.
As a result, Rubio ended up spending a little more than a full year in space, twice as long as he originally expected.
Given Williams’ two previous stays aboard the space station, she will move up to No. 2 on the list of most experienced U.S. astronauts with 608 days in space overall. Only former astronaut Peggy Whitson has more time aloft, 675 days over four flights. Wilmore’s total across three flights will stand at 464 days aloft.
