NASA Astronauts Splash Down Off Florida Coast After 9 Months In Space

 

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams returned to Earth in a SpaceX capsule on Tuesday with a soft splashdown off Florida's coast, nine months after their faulty Boeing (BA.N)

, opens new tab Starliner craft upended what was to be a week-long stay on the International Space Station.

Their return caps a protracted space mission that was fraught with uncertainty and technical troubles, turning a rare instance of NASA's contingency planning - and the latest failures of Starliner - into a global and political spectacle.

Wilmore and Williams, two veteran NASA astronauts and retired U.S. Navy test pilots, had launched into space as Starliner's first crew in June for what was expected to be an eight-day test mission. But issues with Starliner's propulsion system led to cascading delays to their return home, culminating in a NASA decision to fold them into its crew rotation schedule and return them on a SpaceX craft this year.

On Tuesday morning, Wilmore and Williams strapped inside their Crew Dragon spacecraft along with two other astronauts and undocked from the ISS at 1.05 a.m. ET (0505 GMT) to embark on a 17-hour trip to Earth.

The four-person crew, formally part of NASA's Crew-9 astronaut rotation mission, plunged through Earth's atmosphere, using its heatshield and two sets of parachutes to slow its orbital speed of 17,000 mph (27,359 kph) to a soft 17 mph at splashdown, which occurred at 5:57 p.m. ET some 50 miles off Florida's Gulf Coast under clear skies.

"What a ride," NASA astronaut Nick Hague, the Crew-9 mission commander inside the Dragon capsule, told mission control moments after splashing down. "I see a capsule full of grins, ear to ear."

The astronauts will be flown on a NASA plane to their crew quarters at the space agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston for a few days of routine health checks before NASA flight surgeons say they can go home to their families.

"They will get some well-deserved time off, well-deserved time with their families," NASA's Commercial Crew Program chief Steve Stich told reporters after the splashdown. "It's been a long time for them."

POLITICAL SPECTACLE

The mission captured the attention of U.S. President Donald Trump, who upon taking office in January called for a quicker return of Wilmore and Williams and alleged, without evidence, that former President Joe Biden "abandoned" them on the ISS for political reasons.

NASA acted on Trump's demand by moving Crew-9's replacement mission up sooner, the agency's ISS chief Joel Montalbano said Tuesday. The agency had swapped a delayed SpaceX capsule for one that would be ready sooner and sped through its methodical safety review process to heed the president's call.

Trump told Fox News on Tuesday that Wilmore and Williams will visit the Oval Office after they recover from their mission.

Wilmore earlier this month told reporters on a call from the ISS that he did not believe NASA's decision to keep them on the ISS until Crew-10's arrival had been affected by politics under the Biden administration.

Item 1 of 16 NASA astronaut Suni Williams is helped out of a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft onboard the SpaceX recovery ship MEGAN after she, NASA astronaut Nick Hague, and Butch Wilmore, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov landed in the water off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. NASA/Keegan Barber/ Handout via REUTERS

[1/16]NASA astronaut Suni Williams is helped out of a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft onboard the SpaceX recovery ship MEGAN after she, NASA astronaut Nick Hague, and Butch Wilmore, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov landed in the water off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida, Tuesday, March 18, 2025.... Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab 

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, a close adviser to Trump, had echoed Trump's call for an earlier return, adding the Biden administration spurned a SpaceX offer to provide a dedicated Dragon rescue mission last year.

NASA officials have said the two astronauts had to remain on the ISS to maintain adequate staffing levels and it did not have the budget or the operational need to send a dedicated rescue spacecraft. Crew Dragon flights cost between $100 million to $150 million.

Crew Dragon is the only U.S. spacecraft capable of flying people in orbit. Boeing had hoped Starliner would compete with the SpaceX capsule before the mission with Wilmore and Williams threw its development future into uncertainty.

Stich said on Tuesday that Starliner might need to fly another uncrewed flight - which would be its third such mission and fourth test overall - before it routinely carries U.S. astronauts.

Boeing, which congratulated the astronauts' return on X, did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

286 DAYS IN SPACE

The ISS, about 254 miles in altitude, is a football field-sized research lab that has been housed continuously by international crews of astronauts for nearly 25 years, a key platform of science diplomacy managed primarily by the U.S. and Russia.

Swept up in NASA's routine astronaut rotation schedule, Wilmore and Williams worked on roughly 150 science experiments aboard the station until their replacement crew launched last week.

The pair logged 286 days in space on the mission - longer than the average six-month ISS mission length, but far short of U.S. record holder Frank Rubio, whose 371 days in space ending in 2023 were the unexpected result of a coolant leak on a Russian spacecraft.

Living in space for months can affect the human body in multiple ways, from muscle atrophy to possible vision impairment.

Williams, capping her third spaceflight, has tallied 608 cumulative days in space, the second most for any U.S. astronaut after Peggy Whitson's 675 days. Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko set the world record last year at 878 cumulative days.

"We came prepared to stay long, even though we planned to stay short," Wilmore told reporters from space earlier this month.

"That's what your nation's human spaceflight program's all about," he said. "Planning for unknown, unexpected contingencies. And we did that."

A bar chart showing a list of astronauts with the most time spent in space.

When astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams embarked on Boeing’s Starliner capsule on June 5, 2024, they expected to be away from home for just over a week.

Instead, they spent around 9 months in orbit on the International Space Station. But after over 286 days, their extended stay in space is finally coming to a close, as the two astronauts make their way back to Earth on a SpaceX capsule that’s set to splash down off the coast of Florida on Tuesday.

Wilmore, 62, and Williams, 59, are both veteran NASA astronauts and retired U.S. Navy test pilots. Williams became an astronaut in 1998 and Wilmore in 2000. The two were the first crew aboard what was meant to be a quick test flight for the Starliner. But the vessel was plagued with problems that almost prevented it from making it to the ISS, including a helium leak and thruster malfunctions. NASA ordered the Boeing capsule to return unmanned in September, while Wilmore and Williams were left aboard the space station awaiting a safe flight home.

At the end of January, President Donald Trump and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk blamed the Biden Administration for delaying the astronauts’ return—which former space station commander Andreas Morgensen called “a lie.” Musk claimed in posts on X that SpaceX offered to bring Williams and Wilmore home months earlier, but that it was denied for “political reasons.” (Former NASA officials said no offer was made to the space agency, and former NASA administrator Bill Nelson said the decision to wait until February for the stranded astronauts to return home rested on safety procedures).

In August, NASA decided to bring them back on a SpaceX capsule. The Dragon-9 vessel launched in September but remained docked at the ISS while waiting for a relief crew. That relief mission saw hold-ups: the scheduled flight was meant to launch in February but was delayed due to battery work on the SpaceX capsule. A hydraulics issue delayed another launch attempt last Wednesday with a new SpaceX capsule. On Friday, NASA and SpaceX successfully launched the Crew-10 mission to orbit with four astronauts aboard a SpaceX capsule that arrived at the ISS on Saturday to relieve Wilmore and Williams. 

Such a long time spent in space can take a physical and mental toll, but Wilmore and Williams’ expedition isn’t the longest spaceflight. Five previous American astronauts—including the U.S. record-holder Frank Rubio as well as Peggy Whitson, who has spent the most cumulative days in space for an American astronaut—have spent more days in space on a single mission. And Russian cosmonauts hold worldwide records for both consecutive and cumulative days in space.

World’s longest single stay in space: Valery Polyakov

Russian cosmonaut Valery Polyakov set the world record for the longest single spaceflight in history in 1995, spending 437 days, 17 hours, and 38 minutes in space and orbiting the Earth 7,075 times, according to the New Mexico Museum of Space History.

Having studied astronautical medicine at Moscow’s Institute of Medical and Biological Problems, Polyakov became an asset to the study of the effects of space on the human body.

At the age of 46, he launched into the Mir space station aboard Soyuz TM-6 on Aug. 29, 1988—16 years after becoming a Soviet cosmonaut in 1972. He was accompanied by fellow Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Lyakhov and Abdul Ahad Momand, Afghanistan’s first astronaut. While the rest of his crew returned to Earth just a week later, Polyakov stayed on to monitor the health of cosmonauts Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov, who endured the first year-long spaceflight. After Titov and Manarov returned to Earth in December 1988, Polyakov remained on Mir for another four months to await two new crewmembers.

Polyakov ultimately returned to Earth in April 1989, marking more than 240 days in space, according to the Moscow Times.

For his record-setting second mission, Polyakov was aboard Mir for 14 months, beginning on Jan. 8, 1994. Across 25 experiments and investigations, he studied the physical and cognitive functions of rotating crews from Russia, Kazakhstan, Germany, and the U.S. On March 22, 1995, Polyakov boarded the Soyuz TM-20 spacecraft, alongside Aleksandr Viktorenko and Yelena Kondakova, to return to Earth.

Upon his return, Polyakov refused the standard practice of being carried out of the spacecraft, instead insisting on walking himself with some assistance, according to author of The Story of Manned Space Stations, Philip Baker. His extended expedition allowed scientists to study how human bodies might be affected by long-distance voyages, such as to Mars. Tests found that he was neither physically nor cognitively impaired.

Polyakov died on Sept. 19, 2022, at the age of 80.

U.S. longest single stay in space: Frank Rubio

With 371 consecutive days spent in space, Salvadoran American astronaut Frank Rubio broke the record for the longest spaceflight by an American and the longest time spent aboard the International Space Station. He landed in Kazakhstan on the morning of Sept. 27, 2023, more than a year after leaving Earth.

Rubio was launched into space on Sept. 21, 2022, aboard the Russian spacecraft Soyuz MS-22—his first mission since becoming a NASA astronaut in 2019. The mission was initially expected to take six months, but the spacecraft suffered a coolant leak, forcing the trip to be extended. Russia’s space agency sent an uncrewed Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft to bring home Rubio and his crewmates, Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin.

Rubio’s time in space spanned 5,963 orbits of the Earth and more than 157 million miles. He beat the previous record for an American astronaut of 355 days set by Mark Vande Hei.

World’s longest total time in space: Oleg Kononenko

Another Russian cosmonaut holds the record for total time spent in space. Oleg Kononenko became the first person to log a total of 1000 days in space last June—an equivalent of 33 months. 

Kononenko broke the previous record of 878 cumulative days in orbit set by fellow cosmonaut Gennady Padalka. His time in space spanned 16 years, five ISS expeditions, and 16,000 orbits around the Earth.

U.S. longest total time in space: Peggy Whitson

Whitson, 65, has broken several records throughout her astronautical career. In 2017, she broke the U.S. record for the longest cumulative time spent in space of 534 days set by NASA astronaut Jeff Williams and has held the record since, accumulating 675 total days. She also holds the record for the longest cumulative and consecutive times spent in space for a woman of any nationality, and became the first female commander of the ISS in 2008—and the first woman to command it a second time in 2016. She has flown on three long-duration missions with NASA, and one flight with Axiom Space.

Williams moves just behind Whitson notching a total of 608 cumulative days in space after her third spaceflight. (Wilmore, meanwhile, will have spent a total of 404 cumulative days in space across his three spaceflights.)