NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will soon get to fly home from the International Space Station having flown up on Boeing’s Starliner, but headed home on a SpaceX Crew Dragon.
The duo joined SpaceX Crew-9 commander Nick Hague on Tuesday for a pre-departure news conference from the space station having been on board just shy of nine months.
They arrived on June 6, 2024 aboard Starliner for what was supposed to be as short as an eight-day stay, but because NASA opted to send Starliner home without crew for safety reasons, the duo will have remained on the station for more than nine months.
Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov flew up on the SpaceX Crew Dragon Freedom back in September, leaving free two seats for Williams and Wilmore for the ride home after Crew-9’s planned six-month stay on the station.
“We just feel fortunate and thankful though that we have seats and we’ll be coming home, riding the plasma, splashing down in the ocean, so that’s what we’re looking forward to,” Wilmore said.
Their predicament was thrust into the headlines last month with both Elon Musk and President Trump insisting the decision to leave the Starliner astronauts on the station was political.
“From my standpoint, politics is not playing into this at all,” said Wilmore. “We came up prepared to stay long, even though we planned to stay short. That’s what we do in human spaceflight. That’s what your nation’s human spaceflight program is all about, planning for unknown, unexpected contingencies. And we did that. And that’s s why we flew.”
Musk claimed he was willing to fly up earlier to get the Starliner astronauts, but that offer was declined.
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“I can only say that Mr. Musk, what he says is absolutely factual,” Wilmore said. “We have no information on that though, whatsoever — what was offered, what was not offered, who it was offered to, how that process went. That’s information that we simply don’t have. So I believe him.”
They will depart the station after their replacement’s arrival. The Crew-10 mission is slated to launch from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39-A as early as March 12, which would then dock with the station the following day. The two crews would then spend a few days on board together for a handover and then Williams, Wilmore and their Crew-9 crewmates would take the trip home for a splashdown landing off the coast of Florida.
Wilmore and Williams will have flown on four different spacecraft in their careers. They had previously flown on Russian Soyuz and NASA’s space shuttle, each having visited the space station three times since becoming astronauts.
“It’s been fascinating. It’s been amazing. We feel so fortunate,” Wilmore said. “I mean to train on four different spacecraft, and each one has its own unique capabilities, its own unique systems, its own unique seats, everything, suits. It’s all been great, and to have that opportunity has been wonderful.”
Williams added that the pair feel lucky.
“Coming home in the spacecraft will be a new chapter, and excited about it,” she said.
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