Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore have returned to Earth after an unexpected nine-month stay in space. The NASA astronauts, along with fellow American Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, safely landed in the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida coast at 5:57 PM ET on Tuesday (3:27 AM IST, Wednesday).
Their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, Freedom, re-entered Earth’s atmosphere, enduring scorching temperatures of approximately 3,000°F (1,650°C), before deploying parachutes and splashing down near Tallahassee. A recovery team will transport the crew to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where they will undergo a 45-day rehabilitation program to help their bodies adjust to gravity after their extended time in microgravity.
Originally, Sunita Williams as well as Butch Wilmore have launched aboard Boeing’s Starliner in June 2024 for what was meant to be a brief eight-day test flight to evaluate the spacecraft’s safety for crewed missions. However, propulsion system failures forced the spacecraft to return without the two astronauts, leaving both of them unexpectedly stranded in space.
Rather than launch a separate rescue mission, NASA reassigned them to SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission, which arrived at the ISS last September. To accommodate them, Crew-9’s original four-member team was reduced to two. Though they were informally dubbed the “stranded astronauts,” NASA dismissed the term, stating that they could have been evacuated in an emergency.
Their prolonged stay gained global attention, redefining the phrase “stuck at work” and making Butch and Suni well-known names. While longer spaceflights have been recorded in history, few astronauts have faced such uncertainty about their return date.
On Sunday morning, Crew-9 bid farewell to their ISS colleagues following the arrival of their replacements, Crew-10. Before departing, Hague left a heartfelt message: “To our colleagues and dear friends still aboard the station… we’ll be waiting for you. Crew-9 is going home.”
