After an extended nine-month stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS), NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are finally on the cusp of returning home. Their long-awaited departure was made possible by the successful launch of SpaceX’s Crew-10 mission, which lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on Friday evening, marking a crucial step toward normalizing crew rotations on the orbiting laboratory.
At precisely 7:03 PM ET (2303 GMT), a Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Crew Dragon Endurance roared into the sky from Launch Complex 39A, carrying four astronauts bound for the ISS. The Crew-10 team consists of NASA’s Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Russian cosmonaut Kirill Peskov. Their arrival, scheduled for 11:30 PM ET on March 15, will set the stage for Crew-9’s long-awaited return to Earth.
A Delayed Journey Home for Wilmore and Williams
Wilmore and Williams’ unexpected nine-month mission has been the subject of growing attention, as what was supposed to be an eight-day test flight aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft last June turned into an unplanned extended stay. The Starliner, which was on its maiden crewed voyage, suffered propulsion system failures that rendered it unfit for the return journey. The craft ultimately returned to Earth without a crew, leaving Wilmore and Williams stranded aboard the ISS far longer than planned.
Since then, NASA had always intended for the duo to return aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon, but delays in the Crew-10 mission extended their stay even further. Originally, Crew-10 was slated to launch with a brand-new Dragon capsule, but technical issues with the spacecraft’s battery led NASA and SpaceX to repurpose the Endurance capsule instead, causing additional setbacks.
Despite the delay, the pair’s stay is still far from breaking records. The longest continuous spaceflight by an American astronaut was 371 days, set by Frank Rubio in 2023, while the global record remains 437 days, held by Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov aboard the Mir space station in the 1990s.
Political Controversy Over the Extended Stay
While the delay was primarily technical, it has become an unexpected political flashpoint. The President Donald Trump and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk have repeatedly suggested, without evidence, that former President Joe Biden deliberately abandoned the astronauts in space. The claim has been widely dismissed by the spaceflight community, but it has sparked heated debate.
Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen, who is currently aboard the ISS, attempted to clarify the timeline of Crew-9’s planned return, only to find himself the target of an insult from Musk on social media. Meanwhile, Wilmore himself appeared to side with Musk, stating that the billionaire’s comments must have been “factual,” despite admitting he was unaware of any details.
Trump, on the other hand, raised eyebrows with his peculiar comments on the situation, referring to Williams as “the woman with the wild hair” and bizarrely speculating about the personal dynamics between her and Wilmore. “They’ve been left up there—I hope they like each other, maybe they love each other, I don’t know,” Trump remarked during a White House press conference.
Crew-10 Arrival and the Path to Return
With Crew-10’s docking at the ISS set for Saturday night, NASA plans to begin preparations for Crew-9’s departure as early as March 19, pending favorable weather conditions. Wilmore and Williams will be joined by NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov on the return trip aboard the Crew Dragon Freedom, which has been docked at the ISS since September, waiting for their replacements to arrive.
Once they return, NASA is expected to conduct a thorough debrief on their extended mission and the issues surrounding the Starliner spacecraft, which remains a key part of NASA’s long-term plan for commercial spaceflight.
As space agencies continue to push the boundaries of human spaceflight, the challenges of long-duration missions and spacecraft reliability remain at the forefront. For Wilmore and Williams, however, the focus is on one thing: finally returning home after an unexpected, record-long detour in orbit.
