The first astronauts to fly on board two different commercial spacecraft during a single mission have returned to Earth, splashing down with two of their International Space Station crewmates.
Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore did not set out to make history other than being the first crew to launch on Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner capsule. After their capsule encountered propulsion issues, though, and NASA, out of an abundance of caution, decided to land it without them on board, Williams and Wilmore were reassigned to SpaceX‘s Crew Dragon to complete what ultimately extended from a 12-day to a nine-and-half-month mission.
Landing with WIlliams and Wilmore today (March 18) were fellow NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Aleksandr Gorbunov, a cosmonaut with Russia’s federal corporation Roscosmos. Hague and Gorbunov launched on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon “Freedom” without two of their planned Crew-9 crewmates in September, leaving two seats for Williams and Wilmore to use on the trip home.
“What a ride,” said Hague just after splashing down. “I see a capsule full of grins from ear to ear.”
The four Crew-9 members splashed down safely at 5:57 p.m. EDT (2157 GMT) off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida in the Gulf of Mexico. (They are the first crew to land in that body of water since President Donald Trump signed an executive order redesignating it as the Gulf of America.)
Related: How NASA’s Starliner mission went from 10 days to 9 months: A timeline
SpaceX ships quickly arrived to secure Freedom after its descent under three large parachutes. Once aboard the capsule recovery vessel, Hague, Gorbunov, Wilmore and Williams were helped out of the Dragon and given brief medical checks before being transported by helicopter to the shore.
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From there, the four will be flown by Gulfstream jet to Ellington Field in Houston. Per standard protocols, Hague, Gorbunov, Wilmore and Williams will remain in crew quarters at NASA’s Johnson Space Center for several days before they are approved by flight surgeons to return to their homes.
Crew-9’s return to Earth began early this morning with the undocking of Freedom from the space-facing port on the space station’s Harmony module at 1:05 a.m. EDT (0505 GMT). Their departure left the Expedition 72 crew to continue running the orbiting lab, including Aleksey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner of Roscosmos and Don Pettit with NASA, who launched on Russia’s Soyuz MS-26 spacecraft on Sep. 11, 2024; and the recently arrived members of SpaceX’s Crew-10 mission: Anne McClain, Nichole Ayers of NASA, Takuya Onishi of JAXA (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and Kirill Peskov of Roscomsos.
“We know the station is in great hands,” said Hague as the distance between the Dragon and space station grew. “We’re excited to see what you guys are going to accomplish.”
Fourteen hours later, Freedom jettisoned its rear-mounted trunk and fired its Draco thrusters for about 12 minutes to begin its deorbit and reentry into Earth’s atmosphere.
Freedom’s return was the second time that Hague, Gorbunov, Williams and Wilmore flew on the Dragon. In November, the four Crew-9 members briefly separated from the space station to relocate the capsule to the zenith docking port.
On Williams and Wimore’s way to the ISS in June 2024, their Starliner vehicle, named “Calypso,” developed helium leaks and issues with its thrusters overheating. After testing both before and after docking, Boeing’s engineers believed Williams and Wilmore could safely land on Starliner but deferred to NASA’s mission managers, who decided the risk was too great.
On Sept. 7, Calypso returned to Earth without its crew and landed safely at the White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico.
Williams and Wilmore instead joined the station’s Expedition 72 crew, with Williams serving as commander. With their other crewmates, including Hague and Gorbunov, they ran hundreds of science experiments, maintained the station’s systems, saw the arrival and departure of eight visiting vehicles and performed three spacewalks.
Williams and Wilmore’s extended stay on the station led to some media reports and President Trump to incorrectly describe them as “stranded” or “stuck” in space. At all times, however, the two astronauts had an assured ride home. Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and advisor to Trump, said he offered to launch another Dragon to return Williams and Wilmore earlier, but the status of the other capsules called that claim into question.
“We came up prepared to stay long even though we planned to stay short; that is what we do in human spaceflight,” Wilmore said, replying to a reporter’s question while still on the station.
Starliner’s Crew Flight Test and Dragon’s Crew-9 marked Williams’ and Wilmore’s third flight to and from space. On this mission, the two astronauts traveled 121,347,491 statute miles (195,289,857 kilometers) while completing 4,576 trips around Earth in 286 days.
Williams now has a career total of 608 days in space, the second-most of any U.S. astronaut after Peggy Whitson, who has 675 days. Wilmore has spent 464 days off the planet over the course of his three missions.
Hague and Gorbunov traveled 72,553,920 statute miles (116,764,215 km) while circling Earth 2,736 times over a total of 171 days in space. This is also Hague’s third spaceflight, for a total time off Earth of 374 days. (Gorbunov completed his first spaceflight.)
Crew-9 was SpaceX’s ninth operational and 10th overall mission to fly astronauts to and from the International Space Station for NASA since 2020. This was the fourth flight for Crew Dragon Freedom, having earlier transported Crew-4 in 2022 and the second and third commercial flights for Axiom Space in 2023 and 2024, respectively.
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