There’s been broad speculation and intrigue regarding the plans for Williams and Wilmore’s return trip to Earth, as SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump have said the Biden administration turned down an offer to bring the astronauts home sooner.
For context: NASA decided last August to bring the duo home with this Crew-9 mission. And the space agency — alongside SpaceX — has taken steps to speed up the process in recent weeks, though it’s unclear how much influence Musk and Trump had.
NASA has maintained that Williams, Wilmore and the rest of Crew-9 had to wait for the Crew-10 astronauts to arrive on the International Space Station before they could depart. The overlap was intended to allow the two groups to carry out a routine “handover,” transferring station operations to the freshly arrived team.
That handover period, which typically lasts five days, was noticeably shortened to just two days.
The truncated timeline was put in place to take advantage of clear weather for Crew-9’s splashdown return off the coast of Florida — where conditions are looking less favorable later this week, according to NASA.
However, the timeline also highlights a pattern that has emerged in recent weeks: Musk and Trump have routinely stated their involvement in speeding up Wilmore and Williams’ return, while NASA officials have attributed changes to preexisting planning considerations or other factors, avoiding overt mentions of politics.
NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore — and their two Crew-9 teammates — just completed pressure checks for their white-and-gray flight suits, which are designed to add a layer of extra protection for the crew as they ride home aboard Crew Dragon.
“Their suit pressurization checks — 4 good suits — it was good to go,” a NASA commentator confirmed during an audio broadcast.
Notably, however, Williams and Wilmore arrived at the International Space Station nine months ago in very different attire, donning the royal blue spacesuits from Boeing, which manufactured the Starliner spacecraft that carried them to the ISS last June for its debut crewed flight test.
Starliner’s myriad issues prompted NASA to send that vehicle home without its crew, setting Williams and Wilmore up to ride home aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule — which has carried out routine ISS missions since 2020.
One big hangup: Boeing’s flight suits were not compatible with SpaceX’s Dragon vehicle. And that left the duo in a potentially precarious situation.
In fact, there was a brief period last fall during which Williams’ and Wilmore’s only option for returning to Earth if a catastrophic emergency made the ISS unlivable was to ride home without wearing precautionary flight suits — strapped onto a foam cushion wedged next to the seats onboard SpaceX’s Crew-8 capsule.
That contingency was never needed, of course.
And during their return trip today, Williams is wearing a spare SpaceX suit that was already on board the ISS and happened to fit.
And SpaceX was able to send up a new suit for Wilmore when the company launched the Crew-9 vehicle — the same capsule bringing Williams and Wilmore home right now.
The SpaceX flight suits are “designed to be functional, lightweight, and to offer protection from potential depressurization,” according to a NASA. “A single connection point on the suit’s thigh attaches life support systems, including air and power connections.”
Despite ongoing rhetoric found in tabloids in statements from the Trump White House, NASA’s Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have repeatedly denied suggestions that they were left as orbital castaways.
“That’s been the narrative from day one: stranded, abandoned, stuck — and I get it, we both get it,” Wilmore told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in February. “Help us change the narrative, let’s change it to: prepared and committed despite what you’ve been hearing. That’s what we prefer.”
NASA has consistently said that, even before Williams and Wilmore left Earth, they were prepared for the possibility that their mission may be extended by weeks or months.
“A couple years ago, we made the decision — knowing that this was a test flight — to make sure that we had the right resources, supplies and training for the crew, just in case they needed to be on ISS, for whatever reason, for a longer period of time,” said Dana Weigel, NASA’s manager of the International Space Station Program, during an August 7, 2024 briefing.
A long-running ethos at NASA has been to stay out of the political fray.
The space agency’s lofty goals can necessitate billions of dollars spent across years of work with a singular focus, whether the mission is launching a space-based telescope or building the International Space Station.
That’s why the agency has positioned itself as apolitical: It routinely needs to convince lawmakers from both sides of the aisle, across consecutive presidential administrations, to get behind its efforts.
Just take a peek back at 2017 — when former Congressman Jim Bridenstine, who ran NASA during President Donald Trump’s first term, faced a grilling from then-Senator Bill Nelson, who was later tapped to run NASA in the Biden era.
“The leader of NASA should not be political. The leader of NASA should not be bipartisan. The leader of NASA should be nonpartisan,” Nelson said during his opening remarks of Bridenstine’s 2017 confirmation hearing.
Bridenstine then said during questioning: “I want to make sure that NASA remains, as you said, apolitical, and I will do that to the utmost of my ability should I be confirmed.”
Fast forward to 2025: The rhetoric surrounding Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams’ return trip has become uniquely politically charged.
Trump and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, now a top Trump adviser, have accused former President Joe Biden’s administration of manipulating the mission for political reasons. (Former senior White House and NASA officials have denied the allegations to CNN.)
Meanwhile, however, NASA and SpaceX represenatives have made no mention of politics, “stranded astronauts,” or a “rescue mission” during livestream coverage of Crew-10 and Crew-9.
When asked about claims from Trump and Musk on Friday, Ken Bowersox, the associate administrator for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, replied: “All I can tell you is NASA is an incredible nonpartisan agency. We get support from whoever is in office.”
The three NASA astronauts on board the Crew-9 mission — Nick Hague, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams — will return to their home base at Johnson Space Center in Houston just a day after hundreds of protesters spent the day picketing outside the facilities.
On Monday, demonstrators including NASA engineers and other federal government workers gathered outside JSC to voice their opposition to President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, the effort to slash federal employment and spending led by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
The American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing federal workers, organized the event.
The AFGE is also urging federal employees to write to members of Congress about DOGE, saying Musk and his department “have been on the job for less than two months, but the early results are nothing short of disastrous.”
As the Crew-9 astronauts continued to soar toward their splashdown site near Florida, clear across the country — at NASA headquarters in DC — the agency’s top brass was scheduled to take part in a high-stakes meeting.
The space agency has assembled a “Tiger Team,” according to an email meeting invitation seen by CNN. Tiger Team is a term NASA popularized in the Apollo era and refers to a group of professionals assembled to tackle a complex problem.
Unlike the Tiger Team the space agency put together to get the Apollo 13 astronauts safely home after their spacecraft malfunctioned, the Tiger Team scheduled to meet with DOGE staff today is tasked with implementing potentially sweeping layoffs and spending cuts.
A NASA spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment about the meeting.
On Monday, NASA shared some fun statistics about the nine months NASA’s Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have spent on the International Space Station.
- Total time in orbit (experiencing weightlessness): 286 days
- Total time on board the ISS: 285 days
- Orbits of the Earth: 4,576 laps
- Miles traveled while in space: 121,347,491
- The number of spacecraft — carrying crew or cargo — that Williams and Wilmore saw come and go from the ISS during their nine-month stay: 8 vehicles
As the four Crew-9 astronauts barrel toward their splashdown location off the coast of Florida, people located near the vehicle’s flight path may catch a glimpse as it soars through the sky.
On social media, NASA shared a helpful map, showing where the capsule will pass.
#Crew9 will be difficult to spot in the daytime as it reenters Earth’s atmosphere, but if you want to keep an eye out for @SpaceX‘s Dragon as it heads home today, we have the map for you. pic.twitter.com/dGmSWXbOyv
— NASA (@NASA) March 18, 2025
When astronauts venture to the International Space Station, they travel to orbit tucked inside a spacecraft that makes a precise rendezvous with the ISS, allowing them to climb onboard the football-field size orbital laboratory.
Typically, the same capsule that brought the astronauts to the ISS stays docked just outside the station — waiting until the crew is ready to return to Earth. Then, they climb back on board the same vehicle for their return trip.
But that has not been the case for NASA’s Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore — two veteran astronauts selected to pilot last year’s inaugural test flight of the Boeing Starliner capsule.
There were myriad issues with their Starliner capsule that became apparent during the first leg of their trip in June 2024.
Ultimately, NASA leadership decided last summer not to allow Williams and Wilmore to fly Starliner home. And the spacecraft returned home with an empty cabin last September.
SpaceX was the obvious alternative for getting Williams and Wilmore home. The company has been flying routine missions to and from the ISS with its Crew Dragon capsule since 2020.
So, NASA opted to fold Williams and Wilmore into the formal space station staff as part of the SpaceX Crew-9 mission.
Two astronauts that were previously assigned to Crew-9, a pre-scheduled flight, were then bumped from the mission. That allowed NASA’s Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov to fly to the ISS with two empty seats — reserved for Williams and Wilmore — when the Crew-9 capsule launched in September.
Before Butch Wilmore — a Tennessee native and former Navy test pilot — left Earth for the inaugural crewed flight test of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft last year, he had two decades of experience in NASA’s astronaut corps under his belt.
Prior to his being selected for the astronaut corps in 2000, Wilmore was on exchange as flight test instructor at the Air Force Test Pilot School in California.
During two previous trips to space, Wilmore logged 178 days in orbit. He’s added 286 days to that total with this mission — bringing his cumulative total time in space to 464 days.
Wilmore and his crewmate Suni Willliams have acknowledged that their unexpectedly long stay in space has been challenging as they’ve missed family events. But Wilmore noted in September he considered himself “very fortunate” to have the ability to stay on the International Space Station a few more months and come home aboard a SpaceX-made Crew Dragon vehicle.
“There’s many cases in the past where there have not been other options,” Wilmore said.
During his time in space, Wilmore has said he’s drawn strength from his faith. He’s cited several Bible versus during interviews, including 2 Corinthians 12:9-10, which states, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness”
Before NASA’s Suni Williams left Earth aboard the first-ever crewed test flight of a Boeing Starliner capsule last year — kicking off her unexpectedly long stay on the International Space Station — she was a decorated former Navy test pilot with two decades of experience as a member of NASA’s astronaut corps.
In fact, that’s why Williams was selected to pilot the Starliner mission. It marked a continuation of a long-held NASA tradition: staffing the first flight of a novel spacecraft with astronauts who have previously trained as military test pilots and spent hours flying experimental aircraft.
Williams, selected as a NASA astronaut in 1998, has flown on two prior missions to the ISS.
During a 2012 mission, when Williams flew to the station aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule, she became the first person to finish a triathlon in space, simulating swimming by using a weight-lifting machine and running on a treadmill while strapped in by a harness so she wouldn’t float away.
That came after she ran the Boston Marathon from the space station in 2007.
With the conclusion of this mission, Williams will have logged a cumulative total of 608 days in space. That’s the second most of any US astronaut — man or woman — with the top spot held by Peggy Whitson’s 675 days, according to NASA.
Williams is also the new record holder for total time spent spacewalking by a female astronaut. She’s spent a total of 62 hours and 6 minutes outside the ISS across nine spacewalks.
For NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, this journey began last year when the duo took flight aboard a Boeing Starliner capsule for the vehicle’s inaugural crewed flight test.
But problems quickly emerged.
Helium gas leaks and propulsion issues plagued the Boeing-built vehicle, which had long been hampered by mishaps and development hangups even before Williams and Wilmore took flight.
That’s why NASA and Boeing officials last summer opted to keep Williams and Wilmore in space — safely on board the ISS — as they worked to figure out what went wrong with Starliner.
Engineers tested replicas of Starliner engines on the ground, trying to hash out why five of the vehicle’s thrusters suddenly quit working in space. They determined that unexpected heat buildup may have caused Teflon seals to bulge, restricting the flow of propellant.
That research was a big step forward in figuring out how to fix future Starliner flights.
But it didn’t assuage NASA’s concerns about the safety of the spacecraft that Williams and Wilmore had already flown to orbit.
Ultimately, NASA decided in August that it was too risky for Williams and Wilmore to fly Starliner home.
In an interview with CNN in January, former NASA chief Bill Nelson spoke in depth about the decision to extend the astronauts’ stay in space.
He emphasized that the decision was made with astronaut safety top of mind — and despite Boeing’s objections.
“So all three of us (top NASA leaders) were enormously impacted by the experiences that we had had (with the Columbia and Challenger disasters), and as a result of that, we have absolutely insisted on as much safety as we could have — and we have pounded that message,” Nelson said.
The Starliner capsule ultimately returned home in September, and no major issues were apparent. But it’s not clear when the vehicle may fly again.
Two NASA astronauts that have spent months in the limelight after their Boeing Starliner capsule malfunctioned — extending their weeklong stay in space to nine months — are finally heading home.
But perhaps the toughest part of their mission is still ahead: reentry.
That’s the process by which a spacecraft dives back into Earth’s thick inner atmosphere, causing extreme heat to build up around the spacecraft and intense G-forces and communications blackouts for the astronauts.
Despite the inherent risks of reentry, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams’ journey from the International Space Station is expected to be fairly routine as SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft have flown more than a dozen crewed missions.
Here’s what to expect:
- Williams, Wilmore and the two other Crew-9 members — Nick Hague and Aleksandr Gorbunov of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency — disembarked from the space station aboard their Crew Dragon capsule around 1 a.m. ET Tuesday.
- The crew are now free-flying through orbit aboard their 13-foot (4-meter) wide capsule as it gradually descends — carrying the astronauts from the space station, which orbits 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth, toward the thick inner layer of Earth’s atmosphere.
- Around 5:11 p.m. ET, the Crew Dragon is expected to conduct a “deorbit burn,” during which the capsule will fire its engines for nearly 10 minutes as it plunges back toward Earth for a final descent.
- The jarring physics of hitting the atmosphere while traveling more than 22 times the speed of sound has routinely heated the exterior of returning Crew Dragon spacecraft up to 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit and triggered communication blackouts.
- As Crew Dragon descends, it will deploy two sets of parachutes in quick succession to continue slowing down. In less than an hour, the capsule will aim to go from orbital speeds of more than 17,000 miles per hour to less than 20 miles per hour as the vehicle hits the ocean.
- The Crew-9 vehicle is expected to splash down off the coast of Florida at about 5:57 p.m. ET, where a SpaceX recovery ship will be waiting nearby to haul the capsule out of the water.
- The Crew-9 astronauts are expected to exit their spacecraft aboard stretchers — as is common practice after long-duration space missions — shortly after.
- A helicopter will then ferry the astronauts back to dry land before they board a flight to Houston. They’re expected to land at Ellington Field, which lies just 20 minutes from NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC), by the end of the day.
- The astronauts will spend a few days at JSC until flight surgeons clear them to return home with their families.
