NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams return to Earth after nine months

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams return to Earth after a prolonged space mission, overcoming numerous challenges along the way.

Stuck in space no more, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams returned to Earth on Tuesday (March 18, 2025), hitching a different ride home to close out a saga that began with a bungled test flight more than nine months ago.

SpaceX crew Dragon splashdown LIVE

Their SpaceX capsule parachuted into the Gulf of Mexico in the early evening, just hours after departing the International Space Station. Splashdown occurred off the coast of Tallahassee in the Florida Panhandle, bringing their unplanned odyssey to an end.

It all started with a flawed Boeing test flight last spring.

The two are expected to be gone just a week or so after launching on Boeing’s new Starliner crew capsule on June 5. So many problems cropped up on the way to the space station that NASA eventually sent Starliner back empty and transferred the test pilots to SpaceX, pushing their homecoming into February. Then SpaceX capsule issues added another month’s delay.

Sunday’s arrival of their relief crew meant Mr. Wilmore and Ms. Williams could finally leave. NASA cut them loose a little early, given the iffy weather forecast later this week. They checked out with NASA’s Nick Hague and Russia’s Alexander Gorbunov, who arrived in their own SpaceX capsule last fall with two empty seats reserved for the Starliner duo.

Mr. Wilmore and Ms. Williams ended up spending 286 days in space — 278 days longer than anticipated when they launched. They circled Earth 4,576 times and traveled 121 million miles (195 million kilometers) by the time of splashdown.