Stranded Or Not, Sunita Williams And Butch Wilmore Will Leave The ISS Soon

Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore- the astronauts 'stuck' at the International Space Station (ISS)- will leave space and return to Earth sometime this month if all goes well.

Who Are Williams and Wilmore? The two astronauts, aged 59 and 62, respectively, visited the space station in low-Earth orbit most recently in June 2024.

When the two left for ISS in June, nearly 9 months ago, aboard Boeing Co's Starliner spacecraft, they were supposed to return in about eight days. But all didn't go well.

It was the spacecraft's first crewed test flight after its uncrewed launch in December 2019, and several technical issues were identified while docking with the ISS.

Changed Plans: Their return was hence delayed until NASA decided not to bring them back on the Starliner citing concerns for the safety of the astronauts. The Starliner undocked from ISS in early September and landed in White Sands, New Mexico after a six-hour flight. Williams and Wilmore prepared the vehicle for its solo departure.

NASA then decided that the two of them would return with crew-9 mission members in February aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. The crew-9 mission was supposed to have four crew members but two of them dropped out to ensure space for Williams and Wilmore on the return journey.

Nick Hague and Aleksandr Gorbunov went on to the space station in late September. NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson, who were slated to fly on crew 9 but dropped, will be reassigned to a future mission, NASA added.

Crew-9 Return Faces Delays

Crew-9, however, is also faced with delays of its own. The astronauts can return only after the crew-10 mission arrives at the station. Following a handover period, where crew-9 astronauts will familiarise the newly arrived crew members with ongoing science and station maintenance work, crew-9 can undock and return.

But the launch of crew-10 was pushed to March, subsequently pushing the return of crew-9. NASA is now targeting March 12 for the launch of its crew-10 mission to ISS. While a return date for Williams, Wilmore, Hague, and Gorbunov has not been determined, it will follow a few days after crew-10's arrival at the station.

Stuck In Space

The delay in the return of Williams and Wilmore has given rise to discourses of the astronauts being "stranded in space," one echoed by President Donald Trump and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

“The @POTUS has asked @SpaceX to bring home the 2 astronauts stranded on the @Space_Station as soon as possible. We will do so,” Musk wrote in a post on X in January. “Terrible that the Biden administration left them there so long.”

Trump also said that the two astronauts were "virtually abandoned in space."

The astronauts themselves, however, do not agree.

“That’s been the rhetoric. That’s been the narrative from day one: stranded, abandoned, stuck — and I get it. We both get it,” Wilmore said in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper last month. “But that is, again, not what our human spaceflight program is about. We don’t feel abandoned, we don’t feel stuck, we don’t feel stranded.”

Politicking

NASA made plans for the return of Williams and Wilmore before Trump took the reigns as President.

However, Musk, a close Trump ally, said last month that SpaceX could have brought back the astronauts in 2024 but the Biden administration pushed it.

Musk alleged that the administration did not discuss the price of the mission when he offered to return the astronauts several months ago but flatly refused.

“We would have made it work within the annual budget. The real issue is that they did not want positive press for someone who supported Trump,” Musk said.

When Andreas Mogensen, an ESA astronaut who was part of SpaceX's crew-7 mission noted that the plan to return the astronauts was made last year, Musk resorted to name-calling on social media and said that Mogensen had “no clue what’s really going on.”

Meanwhile, What's With Starliner?

The Boeing spacecraft, with which the entire story begins, was developed by Boeing in collaboration with NASA's Commercial Crew Program. Designed to accommodate seven passengers, it was expected to shuttle four crew members for NASA service missions to the ISS like SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft.

NASA had ordered six crew rotation missions to the ISS in addition to the flight tests. However, as of now, NASA and Boeing's plans for Starliner are unclear. In October, NASA said that the timing and configuration of the spacecraft’s next flight will be ascertained after considering lessons from its past crewed test flight and operational readiness.

“Meanwhile, NASA is keeping options on the table for how best to achieve system certification, including windows of opportunity for a potential Starliner flight in 2025,” the agency then said.

Boeing's losses in the space sector, meanwhile, are widening. In 2024, the company reported a loss from operations in the defense, space, and security segment of $5.4 billion, up from $1.8 billion in 2023.

In October, The Wall Street Journal reported that Boeing is looking to sell its NASA business, including Starliner and operations towards supporting the International Space Station (ISS).

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