Stranded astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore to return to Earth tomorrow

NASA has announced that the SpaceX Crew-9 mission will return to Earth on Tuesday, 18 March. The SpaceX crew will bring home four astronauts from the International Space Station (ISS). The crew includes NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore, Sunita Williams, and Nick Hague, along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.

Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams have been in space for more than nine months as their Boeing Starliner rocket faced propulsion issues.

NASA will provide live coverage of the crew returning to Earth from the ISS, beginning with Dragon spacecraft hatch closure preparations at 10:45 pm EDT on Monday. NASA and SpaceX met on Sunday to assess weather and splashdown conditions off Florida’s coast for the return of the agency’s Crew-9 mission from the International Space Station.

In a statement, NASA stated, “NASA will provide live coverage of the agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 return to Earth from the International Space Station, beginning with Dragon spacecraft hatch closure preparations at 10:45 p.m. EDT Monday, March 17. NASA and SpaceX met on Sunday to assess weather and splashdown conditions off Florida’s coast for the return of the agency’s Crew-9 mission from the International Space Station. Mission managers are targeting an earlier Crew-9 return opportunity based on favorable conditions forecasted for the evening of Tuesday, March 18,” it added.

A SpaceX Dragon spacecraft carrying NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov docked with the International Space Station, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced on Sunday.

On Friday, SpaceX and NASA launched a mission to bring back US astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore from the ISS, where they have been stranded for nine months. The lift-off took place at 7:03 ET on Friday, with a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon spacecraft on the Crew-10 mission.

The launch came after US President Donald Trump urged Elon Musk to rescue the stranded astronauts sooner than NASA had planned. He has repeatedly accused former US President Joe Biden of abandoning them in space