(Bloomberg) — After more than nine months in space, relentless media coverage and a political firestorm, two NASA astronauts who captured the world’s attention for being stuck in orbit will soon be coming home.
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are slated to board a SpaceX Dragon capsule and undock from the International Space Station around 1 a.m. New York time on Tuesday and splashdown around 6 p.m.
The famous astronaut pair arrived at the ISS last June on a Boeing Co. craft, with plans to spend roughly a week in space. But that brief trip turned into nearly a year when NASA decided in August that the duo would come home on a rival SpaceX capsule instead, due to technical issues with Boeing’s Starliner.
Their saga became an international sensation, with some media outlets dubbing them the “stranded” astronauts — a nod to NASA’s reluctance to have them fly home in their original spacecraft. The ordeal put an embarrassing spotlight on Boeing’s struggling space business as the company was rocked by a series of crises that forced a change in senior leadership.
In parallel, their story has highlighted how dependent NASA has become on SpaceX to keep the agency’s major human spaceflight programs up and running.
And in recent months, President Donald Trump and SpaceX Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk politicized the astronauts’ plight, with Trump accusing former President Joe Biden’s administration of virtually abandoning them and Musk claiming that Biden’s team left them in space for political reasons.
NASA and SpaceX representatives wouldn’t confirm Musk’s specific claim during a press conference this month. Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, said the agency looked at a range of options and worked with SpaceX to determine the best way to bring the astronauts home.
The dialogue has thrust NASA into a realm of political discourse that the federal agency typically avoids.
“I can’t think of another decision that was intertwined publicly with politics as much as this one,” said Phil McAlister, NASA’s former director of commercial space.
But at last, the long ordeal of Wilmore and Williams is slated to come to an end, now that a replacement crew has reached the space station to relieve them.
After undergoing some standard medical checks, the crew will board a flight to Houston, where they will be reunited with their families. “It’s been a roller coaster for them, probably a little bit more so than for us,” Williams told reporters from the ISS.
A short stay
For NASA astronauts, there is always the risk that a routine mission will last longer than planned. The agency has extended the stays of astronauts on the space station for months at a time to accommodate changes in traffic schedules or technical issues.
“We came up prepared to stay long, even though we planned to stay short,” Wilmore said during the in-space press conference. “That’s what we do in human spaceflight.”
The earliest Dragon spacecraft that Wilmore and Williams could hitch a ride on launched in September, part of a routine six-month mission. But the scheduling reshuffle meant that two different NASA astronauts slated to travel to the ISS were grounded.
“They’re such professionals, but I mean, what a huge disappointment,” NASA’s former deputy administrator Pam Melroy said of the removed crew.
NASA and the two astronauts have downplayed the idea that they were stranded or in danger, since the agency has had at least one spacecraft docked to the station that could take them home in case of an emergency.
Relying on SpaceX
While NASA says the astronauts have fared just fine in orbit, the test flight marked another flawed mission for Boeing’s Starliner. The vehicle’s first uncrewed test flight to the space station in 2019 ended early due to software malfunctions, and contributed to more than $2 billion in program cost overruns.
Starliner’s history stands in contrast to rival SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, which has been routinely shepherding NASA astronauts to and from the ISS since 2020. SpaceX provided NASA with a backup option that the agency has rarely ever had available in the organization’s more than 60-year history.
The two vehicles were developed under NASA’s Commercial Crew program to ensure the agency has more than one option for transporting astronauts to the orbiting research laboratory.
The agency hasn’t resolved all of Starliner’s issues from its test flight, and Boeing’s commitment to the program is in question, Bloomberg has reported, as Chief Executive Officer Kelly Ortberg looks to prune its portfolio.
NASA’s reliance on SpaceX has come into stark focus in recent months. The agency had to delay the astronauts’ return as SpaceX experienced issues prepping for the replacement mission that needed to fly prior to their departure. Ultimately, SpaceX swapped around Dragon capsules to keep on schedule.
Playing politics
In the months before their homecoming, Musk has called NASA’s decision a political one, claiming that he offered a separate mission to retrieve them but was rebuffed because he was a Trump supporter.
The astronauts said they had no knowledge of an offer, and NASA’s Melroy downplayed the idea that there was one.
“An offer to bring the crew home early, it never came to headquarters,” Melroy told Bloomberg.
Current NASA managers demurred when asked if Trump or Musk’s public proclamations factored into any decisions made to hasten the return of the crew.
“The president’s interest sure added energy to the conversation, and it’s great to have a president who’s interested in what we’re doing,” Ken Bowersox, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, said in a press conference.
The politicization has served as the final act in a story that has gripped the nation during a dynamic time on Earth. Wilmore and Williams will be coming home after missing holidays, birthdays, and a whirlwind administration change, and they’ll be returning to a world where they are much more famous than before they left.
—With assistance from Julie Johnsson.