NASA Astronauts Suni Williams And Butch Wilmore Have Ben Stuck In Space Since June 2024
Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, a pair of NASA astronauts, launched on the Boeing Starliner capsule on June 5, 2024. The original plan was to “spend just over a week” at the International Space Station before getting back into the Starliner to return to Earth. They were expected back on June 14, 2024.
But as we all know, that is not what happened.
The Starliner suffered an array of problems, so NASA decided to bring it back without its crew by remote control, stranding Williams and Wilmore on the International Space Station.
They started their stay as guests but quickly got to work helping the other astronauts with experiments, fixing equipment, and spacewalking. In fact, Williams set a record for the “most time spent spacewalking over a career among female astronauts,” spending 62 hours spacewalking.
In January, President Trump Asked Elon Musk To Pick Up The Pace
SpaceX, the company founded by Elon Musk, was readying a brand-new SpaceX capsule to bring up replacement crew and bring back the stranded astronauts. After he took office, President Trump asked Musk to accelerate the process and bring them home.
The new SpaceX capsule was not ready to fly, but they decided to use a used one to hurry the process up by a few weeks.
Dragon is the official name of the capsule, and it arrived at the ISS with Crew-10 on March 15.
Stranded Astronauts Finally Returned Home
SpaceX revealed that Dragon was set to depart the ISS on March 18.
Dragon undocked from the ISS around 10 pm on Monday (March 17). The capsule officially made splashdown with Crew-9 (Williams and Wilmore) on Tuesday, March 18 at 5:57 p.m. EST time just off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida.
Upon splashdown, they were greeted by a pod of dolphins! See the marvelous video below.
All crew members are safe and will be reunited with their families once they are off the SpaceX recovery ship and flown back to Houston.
Welcome home, Suni and Butch!
Watch the moment Dragon splashed down in the Gulf of America in the video below!
