NASA is targeting Tuesday at 5:57 p.m. EDT for the return of astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who flew to the ISS on Boeing Starliner’s inaugural crew flight test.
From left, clockwise: NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore, Nick Hague, Suni Williams, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov are expected to return to Earth from the International Space Station (ISS)Tuesday evening. Credit: NASA
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who flew to the International Space Station (ISS) in June for an intended eight-day stay, are expected to finally return to Earth Tuesday after spending more than nine months orbiting the planet.
The space agency on Sunday said it expects the astronauts — the commander and pilot of Boeing Starliner’s inaugural crew flight test (CFT) — to splash down off the Florida coast Tuesday at 5:57 p.m. EDT. NASA had originally been targeting a Wednesday splashdown. But after meeting with SpaceX, whose Crew Dragon spacecraft will serve as Wilmore and Williams’ ride home, officials determined that weather conditions are more favorable for a Tuesday return.
NASA began live coverage of the journey Monday at 10:45 p.m. EDT, when Wilmore, Williams, NASA astronaut Nick Hague, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov enter the Dragon capsule and close its hatch. Hague and Gorbunov arrived at the ISS in November as part of SpaceX’s downsized Crew-9 mission, which flew with two crew rather than four to make room for the Starliner duo. All four participated in NASA’s ISS Expedition 72.
NASA’s live stream captured Dragon’s undocking at around 1:05 a.m. EDT Tuesday before switching to an audio-only feed. If weather conditions at the splash down locations are clear, video coverage will resume at 4:45 p.m. EDT. Dragon is expected to perform a deorbit burn at 5:11 p.m. in preparation for a landing just before 6 p.m. EDT.
Following splashdown, Sarah Walker, director of Dragon mission management for SpaceX, will join a trio of NASA officials for a return-to-Earth news conference at 7:30 p.m. EDT.
Wilmore and Williams’ extended stay has been the subject of controversy, with some observers — including SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump — describing the astronauts as stranded or abandoned.
Musk, for example, has claimed that SpaceX offered NASA a mission profile that would have returned Wilmore and Williams sooner, but it was rejected because “they did not want positive press for someone who supported Trump.” Current and former high-ranking NASA officials have denied receiving such an offer.
In reality, many factors are at play in the astronauts’ return. Boeing is developing Starliner as an alternative to SpaceX’s Dragon to give NASA a second option for rotating astronaut crews at the ISS. The CFT was intended to be the spacecraft’s final sojourn before NASA approves it for those missions, and the space agency had hoped for it to complete the test flight rather than modify the station’s busy docking schedule. An earlier return would not have been as simple as sending a Dragon to “go get” the astronauts, as Trump suggested in January, because Starliner was parked where the vehicle would dock.
After engineers uncovered helium leaks and faulty thrusters on Starliner, NASA and Boeing conducted extensive testing on the ground and in orbit to determine whether it was safe for Wilmore and Williams. Ultimately, the spacecraft returned in September without crew, and Crew-9 was modified to make way for their return in February. Delays to the Crew-10 mission, which launched on Friday with their replacements, pushed that timeline to March.
“If you’ll help us change the rhetoric, help us change the narrative, let’s change it to ‘prepared and committed,’” Wilmore told CNN during an interview in February. “That’s what we prefer.”
A version of this story originally appeared on FLYING.
