Starliner astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore are finally set to return home this week, after 9 months in space

Two NASA astronauts who have been in space for more than nine months awaiting a return trip to Earth are finally set to come home this week.

Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore — who have been aboard the International Space Station since June of last year — welcomed the SpaceX Crew-10 mission with four new astronauts who are set to relieve them of their current space duties to the space station on Sunday.

Williams and Wilmore will spend a couple of days showing the newcomers — NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov — the ropes of the space station.

On Sunday evening, NASA said the astronauts were slated to return home Tuesday evening.

Last week, SpaceX scrubbed the launch of Crew-10 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida due to a hydraulic issue with "a ground support clamp arm" on the Falcon 9 rocket. But Crew-10 finally lifted off on Friday night, docking at the ISS on Sunday.

?? How we got here

Last June, Williams and Wilmore launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., aboard Boeing’s new Starliner, on what was supposed to be an eight-day test mission. But helium leaks and thruster failures almost derailed their arrival at the ISS, and have kept them at the orbiting lab ever since.

In August, NASA announced that issues with the Starliner were more serious than first thought and that Williams and Wilmore would instead hitch a ride back to Earth with the SpaceX Crew-9 capsule in February, instead of waiting for tests on the Starliner to be completed.

In December, NASA announced that SpaceX needed more time to complete the capsule it would need for the launch of Crew-10, which under NASA’s normal protocols, would need to arrive before Crew-9 leaves the space station.

“NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 now is targeting no earlier than late March 2025 to launch four crew members to the International Space Station,” the space agency said at the time.

In January, after taking office, President Trump said that he had ordered SpaceX founder Elon Musk to “go get” the two NASA astronauts, while blaming the previous administration for the delays.

?????????? What the astronauts are saying

While their stay aboard the space station was unexpectedly extended, Wilmore and Williams, like all NASA astronauts, had trained for a lengthy mission. They have repeatedly said that they do not feel “stranded” in space.

At a news conference earlier this month, Wilmore said that politics was not a factor in delaying their return to Earth.

"From my standpoint, politics is not playing into this at all," Wilmore said. "We came up prepared to stay long, even though we planned to stay short. That's what we do in human space flight. That's what your nation's human space flight program is all about, planning for unknown, unexpected contingencies. And we did that."

But both astronauts said they are eager to reunite with their families.

“It’s been a roller coaster for them, probably a little bit more so than for us,” Williams said. “We’re here. We have a mission. We’re just just doing what we do every day, and every day is interesting, because we’re up in space and it’s a lot of fun.”