NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, who have been aboard the International Space Station (ISS) for over nine months, are set to return to Earth on Tuesday evening. They will return alongside fellow astronauts Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft.
NASA has scheduled live coverage of the SpaceX Crew-9 mission’s return, beginning with Dragon spacecraft hatch closure preparations at 10:45 p.m. EDT on Monday, March 17. The crew’s return follows a review of weather and splashdown conditions off the coast of Florida. The mission managers are targeting an earlier return opportunity on Tuesday, March 18, based on favorable conditions.
Williams and Wilmore were originally scheduled to stay on the ISS for about a week but have been stranded since June due to delays caused by issues with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. The spacecraft was unable to return the astronauts after it was found to have malfunctioned in September. The return mission was further expedited after President Donald Trump urged Elon Musk to speed up the process of rescuing the astronauts.
