NASA astronaut Sunita Williams and the Crew-9 astronauts are set to return to Earth aboard SpaceX’s Dragon Freedom, concluding a mission that was originally planned for a week but extended to over nine months. The spacecraft is scheduled to land in the Gulf of America near Tallahassee at 5:57 PM (ET), according to a SpaceX engineer, CNN reported.
A crew operations resource engineer (CORE) at SpaceX’s headquarters in California confirmed the landing schedule.
NASA’s Crew Dragon capsule, carrying Williams and Crew-9, has closed its small, gumdrop-shaped nose cone ahead of re-entry. The cap had remained open since the spacecraft launched from Florida in September 2024.
“We have confirmation that the nose cone is closed, and everything is nominal, or as expected, with that closure. So we begin the second half of entry,” officials announced during the event livestream.
NASA also confirmed the progress of re-entry, posting on X:
“Crew-9’s deorbit burn is underway. This eight-minute thruster fire will place SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft on a precise trajectory to its final splashdown site off the coast of Florida about 45 minutes from now.”
Williams and fellow astronaut Barry Wilmore originally launched into space in June 2024 aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft for a test flight. However, due to safety concerns, NASA later deemed it too risky to bring them back on the same vehicle. As a result, they are returning aboard SpaceX’s Crew-9, a routine ISS rotation mission, alongside NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.
Crew-9 was finally able to depart this week after four Crew-10 astronauts arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday, taking over station duties.
The prolonged mission also became a political flashpoint. Former US President Donald Trump and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk suggested that SpaceX could have returned the astronauts earlier but was allegedly blocked by the administration led by former President Joe Biden, CNN reported.
With the landing now imminent, NASA, SpaceX, and millions of well-wishers around the world await the safe return of Williams and her fellow astronauts.
