Advertisement
NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry ‘Butch’ Wilmore are finally on their way home after spending more than nine months stranded on the International Space Station (ISS).
The pair were only supposed to spend eight days on the floating laboratory when they launched aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft on June 5.
But numerous technical issues with their ship, including thruster failures and helium leaks, drove NASA to send Starliner home without its crew in September.
Williams and Wilmore have been living on the ISS ever since, waiting to hitch a ride home on SpaceX’s Crew-9 return flight which has been pushed back multiple times.
Their unexpectedly long space mission became a political flashpoint following comments from President Donald Trump and his close advisor, SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk, who both said the Biden administration ‘abandoned’ the Starliner crew in space for ‘political reasons.’
During a February appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, the Joe Rogan Experience, Musk claimed he offered to bring the pair home eight months ago, but the Biden Administration shot it down because it would have made Trump ‘look good’ in the presidential race against Kamala Harris.
Tonight, Williams and Wilmore plan to return to Earth in SpaceX’s Crew-9 Dragon capsule, which is already docked to the ISS. The pair will be accompanied by NASA’s Nick Hague and Russia’s Aleksandr Gorbunov, who flew to the space station in the Crew-9 Dragon in September.
The spacecraft is scheduled to undock from the ISS at approximately 1:05am ET Tuesday. If all goes according to plan, the Starliner and Crew-9 astronauts should splash down off the coast of Florida at roughly 5:57pm ET that same day.
By that time, Williams and Wilmore will have spent 286 days in space.
Follow MailOnline’s live coverage of the highly anticipated event below.
NASA astronauts enter capsule that will return them to earth
