Starliner astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore are set to return home next 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.

Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore — who have been aboard the International Space Station since last June last year — are due to undock with the SpaceX Crew-9 on March 16, after the arrival of a relief crew that is scheduled to launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday night.

Late last week, NASA officially cleared the Crew-10 mission carrying the NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov to the ISS.

On Sunday, Crew-10 completed a “dry dress rehearsal” for its March 12 launch aboard the Endurance capsule.

“After Crew-10 arrives, Crew-9 will help the newly arrived crew familiarize with ongoing science and station maintenance work,” NASA said.

After a two-day handover period, NASA and SpaceX will prepare to return Williams and Wilmore, along with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, aboard the Freedom capsule, “pending weather conditions at the splashdown sites off the coast of Florida.”

?? 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 last week, 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.”