The NASA astronauts who crewed the Boeing Starliner could be on their way home a little sooner than expected.
Weather conditions off the Florida coast, where astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will land with the two members of a mission known as Crew-9, prompted NASA and SpaceX to move up the mission’s return date. Wilmore and Williams are now expected to board a SpaceX Dragon capsule with the Crew-9 team to undock early Tuesday morning from the International Space Station.
The four spacefarers – also including NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov – would then make a water landing Tuesday evening near Florida.
NASA was initially targeting a Wednesday undocking and return.
What happened to the Boeing Starliner?
The impending homecoming has been months in the making for Wilmore and Williams, who in June flew to the orbital laboratory aboard the Starliner spacecraft. The mission, the maiden crewed voyage of Boeing’s vehicle, ended in failure when a slew of technical issues with the spacecraft prompted NASA to send it back in September without its crew for an autonomous landing in New Mexico.
Wilmore and Williams, who instead joined SpaceX Crew-9 when Hague and Gorbunov arrived later that same month, have since been awaiting that mission to conclude and its replacements to arrive. That happened Saturday when the four astronauts of the Crew-10 mission reached the space station following a Friday night launch from Florida.
The Starliner astronauts will now make their long-awaited return journey to Earth with the Crew-9 team.
Starliner saga: As Starliner astronauts prepare for return, look back at the mission’s biggest moments
When will the Starliner astronauts return with Crew-9?
Starliner astronauts Wilmore and Williams are due to board the SpaceX Dragon that the Crew-9 team flew to the space station in late September to undock around 1:05 a.m. EST Tuesday.
Ahead of Wilmore, Williams, Hague and Gorbunov would then be about a 17-hour flight back down to Earth before they’d land at around 5:57 p.m. EST off the Florida coast, according to NASA.
How to watch Crew-9 undocking, landing
NASA plans to provide coverage of both the undocking and landing on its streaming service, NASA+.
A livestream of the Dragon’s undocking is scheduled to begin at 12:45 a.m. EST Tuesday.
The space agency would then resume covering the Dragon’s return voyage around 4:45 p.m. EST Tuesday before the spacecraft’s planned deorbiting burn and water landing.
A press conference would then take place around 7:30 p.m. for NASA officials to discuss the landing, though the astronauts would not participate so soon after returning.
What will Crew-10 do at the International Space Station?
The Saturday night arrival of the Crew-10 astronauts is what set the stage for Wilmore and Williams to finally return after more than nine months and 280 days in orbit.
The crew, under the command of NASA astronaut Anne McClain, also includes NASA pilot Nichole Ayers and two mission specialists from other space agencies: Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov.
The Crew-10 mission launched Friday night from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, with a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket propelling the astronauts into orbit aboard their own Dragon capsule. Once separated from the rocket, the Dragon Endurance, which has flown on SpaceX crew mission before, used its own thrusters to autonomously power on to the space station.
Before the outgoing astronauts depart the station, they’ve been spending a few days helping the new arrivals familiarize themselves with the orbital laboratory and station operations during a handover period. Once the Crew-9 members have left, Ayers, McClain, Onishi and Peskov will become part of Expedition 73 and remain at the station for about six months on a rotation conducting scientific experiments.
The SpaceX crew missions are contracted under NASA’s commercial crew program, which allows the U.S. space agency to pay SpaceX to launch and transport astronauts and cargo to orbit aboard the company’s own vehicles. The Boeing Starliner is meant to one day become a second operational vehicle for NASA under the program, though its path toward certification remains fraught after its botched inaugural crewed flight test.
Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]
