Tuesday, March 18, 2025
Year : 2, Issue: 29
USA Today: The astronauts who flew aboard the infamous Boeing Starliner for its maiden crewed voyage are on their way home.
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore boarded a SpaceX Dragon capsule docked at the International Space Station and began their journey back to Earth. Joining Williams and Wilmore for the voyage are the two spacefarers of a mission known as Crew-9, who in September arrived at the orbital laboratory aboard that particular Dragon spacecraft.
Later Tuesday evening, the Dragon carrying the four astronauts – including NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov – is due to splash down off the Florida coast.
The imminent water landing would bring to an end a lengthy spaceflight saga that thrust Williams and Wilmore into the spotlight and raised questions about the future of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. For more than nine months, Williams and Wilmore have lived among the stars after arriving for a doomed mission that was only meant to last a few days.
In that time, the pair of experienced astronauts have become near-household names, with their ordeal capturing public fascination and later becoming politicized when President Donald Trump decided to weigh in.
The departure of the Starliner astronauts with Crew-9 is a little earlier than expected after NASA initially announced that the four spacefarers wouldn’t head back to Earth any earlier than Wednesday.
But after examining weather forecasted off the Florida coast, NASA and SpaceX opted to bump up the return date to when conditions should be better for the Dragon’s landing.
