Two NASA astronauts who spent more than 280 days aboard the International Space Station undocked from the ISS early on Tuesday, kicking off their long-awaited return journey.
The big picture: Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams have been in a galactic holding pattern hundreds of miles above the Earth’s surface after boarding the ISS in June 2024 as part of the Boeing Starliner’s first crewed test flight.
- After technical issues and safety concerns pushed their return flight back, the saga of the “stranded” astronauts — who say they were not “stranded, abandoned” or “stuck” — has garnered national attention and launched the pair’s story into the political orbit.
- Astronauts have lived aboard the space station for longer than nine months (NASA astronaut Frank Rubio logged over a year), but the unexpected nature of their layover — which was supposed to last just days — sent eyes to the skies.
Driving the news: The SpaceX Dragon undocked from the space station at 1:05am Tuesday ET.
- Along with Williams and Wilmore, the capsule is carrying NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Aleksandr Gorbunov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, who took the spacecraft to the ISS in September.
- The whole trip is estimated to take around 17 hours to splashdown.
Catch up quick: NASA announced in August it was readying plans to bring the duo home aboard a SpaceX spacecraft — but not until the following year.
- That trip was delayed until this month.
- Williams and Wilmore were integrated into Expedition 72, NPR reports. They’ve conducted research and performed spacewalks, with Williams setting a new record for total spacewalking time by a female astronaut.
- A four-person replacement crew arrived early Sunday, where they were greeted with hugs from the others already aboard the ISS.
Friction point: President Trump claimed that the Biden administration had “virtually abandoned” the pair in space in January, a claim Trump ally and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk endorsed.
- The astronauts rejected the idea that they were abandoned, with Wilmore telling CNN, “That’s been the narrative from day one: stranded, abandoned, stuck — and I get it. We both get it.”
- He continued, “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.”
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Editor’s note: This article has been updated to include video posted by the Facebook account of NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
