- NASA moved up the return flight for two stranded astronauts to beat an upcoming storm.
- Boeing Starliner problems extended a one-week mission into nine months in space.
- An earlier flight back to Earth would have left the International Space Station understaffed.
An unexpectedly epic saga for veteran NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams ended just before 4 p.m. MDT Tuesday.
Following the SpaceX Crew 10 arrival at the International Space Station on Saturday, veteran Navy pilots Wilmore and Williams traveled home aboard the SpaceX Dragon capsule that’s been docked at the space station since last fall, completing a 286-day stay in space.
The two, along with fellow NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, splashed down in the Atlantic off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida, at 3:57 MDT Tuesday. NASA moved the return flight up a day to bring the crew back ahead of an anticipated weather system headed for the Florida coast.
Recovery boats quickly responded after the capsule, slowed by four giant parachutes, entered the calm waters traveling around 16 m.p.h., completing a flight that left about 17 hours earlier from the ISS.
A pod of dolphins swam around the capsule as recovery crews maneuvered the capsule into position to be lifted aboard a recovery vessel at 4:25 p.m. MDT. A short time later, crew members emerged from the capsule and were transported on stretchers for medical evaluation, a standard procedure for returning astronauts.
NASA made good use of Wilmore’s and Williams' extended stay on the ISS as the astronauts helped conduct over 150 science experiments and performed various maintenance duties. They removed a radio frequency group antenna assembly from the station’s truss, collected samples from the station’s external surface for analysis, installed patches to cover damaged areas of light filters on an X-ray telescope, and more, according to NASA.
Williams made two spacewalks, joined by Wilmore for one and Hague for another. She now holds the record for total spacewalking time by a female astronaut, with 62 hours and 6 minutes outside the station, and is fourth on the all-time spacewalk duration list.
During a press conference Tuesday evening, NASA officials noted preparations for mission variations, including extra time on the ISS, are standard practice and astronauts spend years training for contingencies.
“The thing I think back about this ... timeframe is how really resilient Butch and Suni were the whole time,” said Steve Stich, program manager for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
“They launched on what was going to be a short test flight … and then they moved very quickly into station increment operations and they became seamlessly part of the International Space Station. And they did that because they are experienced astronauts and because they had prepared."
Stich also addressed one reporter’s questions about whether or not it was accurate to describe Wilmore and Williams as having been “stranded” on the ISS, a description that NASA officials have repeatedly discounted.
“We always had a lifeboat, a way for them to come home all the way back to Starliner,” Stich said. “We always had a way to get the crew home safely should we need to. Then it really became, when is the right time.
“For me, it’s been the normal kind of planning I do all the time. Looking at all the options working with SpaceX, working with the space station program and finding the right time to bring the crew back.”
Wilmore and Williams rocketed into space last June for an expected one-week stay on the International Space Station. But a slew of technical issues with the Boeing Starliner spaceship that Wilmore and Williams flew to the station on the craft’s debut crewed mission led to a decision to keep them in space as Starliner returned to Earth empty last September.
Later that month, a modified SpaceX Crew 9 mission arrived at the space station with two astronauts aboard and two empty seats to bring Wilmore and Williams home.
A decision to bring Wilmore and Williams home early aboard the Crew 9 ship ahead of Crew 10’s arrival would have left NASA astronaut Don Pettit, who flew to the ISS with a Russian crew last September, as the only American aboard the station, a rare staffing imbalance that NASA has said complicates maintenance of the station’s U.S. components.
“Sure, it could have taken us home, but that leaves only three people on the space station from the Soyuz crew, two Russians and one American,” Williams told CBS News in an in-flight interview. “And, you know, the space station is big. It’s a building, you know, it’s the size of a football field. Things happen.”
“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,” NASA wrote in a Sunday press release. “Mission managers are targeting an earlier Crew 9 return opportunity based on favorable conditions forecasted for the evening of Tuesday, March 18.”
Why were the astronauts in space so long?
Problems with the flight of Boeing’s Starliner capsule arose early on when five of 28 maneuvering thrusters failed to perform as expected during the ship’s docking at the space station on June 6, 2024. Engineers also identified five small helium leaks, some of which were detected before the spacecraft launched. Helium is used in the capsule’s thruster firing procedure.
Engineering teams spent months working to identify the underlying issues with the thrusters, critical for maneuvering and positioning the spacecraft, including reviewing massive amounts of data, conducting flight and ground testing, hosting independent reviews with agency propulsion experts and developing various return contingency plans, NASA reported last year.
But ultimately NASA decided that ongoing uncertainty and a lack of concurrence at the time among engineers and other experts about resolving the Starliner problems “does not meet the agency’s safety and performance requirements for human spaceflight, thus prompting NASA leadership to move the astronauts to the (SpaceX Dragon) Crew 9 mission.”
The Starliner capsule returned to Earth empty last Sept. 6 following a six-hour flight that did not encounter any issues.
Later that month, the SpaceX Crew 9 mission docked at the International Space Station, with only two astronauts aboard and plans to fill the remaining seats in the four-passenger capsule with Williams and Wilmore for a return flight scheduled, at the time, for February 2025.
On Dec. 17, NASA announced it was delaying the SpaceX Crew 10 mission launch and the expected crew handoff that would have marked the end of Williams’ and Wilmore’s time at the space station. NASA said the delay would push out the Crew 9-Crew 10 handoff to late March 2025.
