What was supposed to be around a week’s stay stretched to become a 9-month sojourn in the space. Finally, Indian-descent American astronaut Sunita Williams and her fellow NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore are returning to Earth, ending an unusually protracted stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
Earlier, NASA had said a spacecraft carrying Williams and three other astronauts—Wilmore, Nick Hague, and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov—is poised to undock from the ISS at 1:05 a.m. ET (10:35 a.m. IST) and splash down off the coast of the American state of Florida at 5:57 p.m. ET (around 3 a.m. Wednesday in India). Williams and others are returning aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. The crew of the spacecraft called Dragon is scheduled to undock from the ISS and for Williams and Wilmore, it will be the start of a journey they were supposed to undertake 10 months ago at the end of their around 8-day mission to the space station. Their earlier schedule was delayed because of technical reasons, NASA has said.
After the successful undocking of SpaceX Crew-9, NASA posted on X:
#Crew9 is officially Earth bound.
After living and working aboard the orbiting laboratory, @NASA_Astronauts Nick Hague, Butch Wilmore, and Suni Williams, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov successfully undocked from the @Space_Station at 1:05 a.m. ET, Tuesday, March 18.… pic.twitter.com/3QprUXctyC
— NASA’s Johnson Space Center (@NASA_Johnson) March 18, 2025
Elon Musk, the SpaceX owner whose spacecraft is bringing back Williams and Wilmore, has suggested the two astronauts could have been brought
back earlier with his help. “They were left up there for political reasons, which is not good,” Musk said in an interview alongside President Donald Trump on Fox News recently.
An Extended Space Mission For Sunita Williams And Butch Wilmore
Wilmore and Williams have been stranded on the ISS for nine months after reaching there in June last year. They were supposed to stay there for about a week. The astronauts were transported from Earth to the ISS aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. However, the spacecraft came back to Earth unmanned in September. This came after Starliner faced “helium leaks” and “issues with the spacecraft reaction control thrusters” while docking with the ISS, Fox News reported.
NASA’s Live Coverage
NASA, earlier in a statement, had announced that it will provide live coverage of the agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 return to Earth from the International Space Station.”NASA and SpaceX met on Sunday to assess weather and splashdown conditions off Florida’s coast for the return of the agency’s Crew-9 mission from the International Space Station. Mission managers are targeting an earlier Crew-9 return opportunity based on favourable conditions forecasted for the evening of Tuesday, March 18,” it added.
.@NASA will provide live coverage of Crew-9’s return to Earth from the @Space_Station, beginning with @SpaceX Dragon hatch closure preparations at 10:45pm ET Monday, March 17.
Splashdown is slated for approximately 5:57pm Tuesday, March 18: https://t.co/yABLg20tKX pic.twitter.com/alujSplsHm
— NASA Commercial Crew (@Commercial_Crew) March 16, 2025
Williams, Wilmore Thank Elon Musk And Donald Trump
Meanwhile, Williams and Wilmore have expressed their gratitude for SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and US President Donald Trump. In the video posted by Musk on X, Sunita Williams said, “We are coming back before long, so don’t make those plans without me. We’ll be back before too long.” Butch Wilmore said, “All of us have the utmost respect for Mr Musk and obviously respect and admiration for our President of the United States Donald Trump. We appreciate them, we appreciate all what they do for us, human spaceflight for our nation, and we’re thankful for the positions they are in.”
