Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore originally planned to stay just a week on the space station, but problems with their Boeing vehicle forced them to remain there until this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore<\/a> are finally coming home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The astronauts, who had planned to visit the International Space Station for just a week but have been there more than nine months, are set to depart Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Their journey back to Earth will close out an unusual and closely watched chapter in spaceflight history. Williams and Wilmore became household names after launching on the first crewed test flight of Boeing\u2019s Starliner capsule<\/a> in June. But they encountered problems with the vehicle\u2019s thrusters while docking to the space station, which eventually led NASA to bring the Starliner back to Earth without anyone on board<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That forced Williams and Wilmore to remain in orbit for far more time than planned. But at long last, they are scheduled to depart the space station on Tuesday at 1:05 a.m. ET aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule<\/a>. The astronauts should then splash down off the coast of Florida at 5:57 p.m. ET.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alongside them will be NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, who are wrapping up a roughly six-month mission at the space station.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The particular timing of the group\u2019s return flight on Tuesday was decided \u201cbased on favorable conditions forecasted for the evening of Tuesday, March 18,\u201d NASA said in a statement<\/a>. (The agency previously targeted Wednesday for the journey.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The SpaceX vehicle that the four will share arrived at the space station in September, carrying Hague and Gorbunov, along with two empty seats to accommodate their colleagues. Williams and Wilmore then stuck around so that Hague and Gorbunov could complete their mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is now ending as a\u2002new set of astronauts<\/a> takes over. On Sunday, Williams, Wilmore, Hague and Gorbunov welcomed the incoming crew<\/a> \u2014 NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Russian cosmonaut Kirill Peskov \u2014 to the orbiting outpost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In that sense, despite the attention their extraordinary circumstances have garnered, Williams and Wilmore were not \u201cstranded\u201d in space. Both have repeatedly challenged that characterization, maintaining that they have enjoyed their extended time living and working in low-Earth orbit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEvery day is interesting because we\u2019re up in space and it\u2019s a lot of fun,\u201d Williams said in a news briefing earlier this month, but added that the waiting and uncertainty was likely hard for family members on the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nonetheless, their unexpectedly long stay in orbit has become a political talking point for SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump. Both have made unsubstantiated claims that the Biden administration held up the flight back to Earth for political reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis began when I asked Elon Musk to go up and get the abandoned Astronauts, because the Biden Administration was incapable of doing so,\u201d Trump wrote Monday in a post on Truth Social. \u201cThey shamefully forgot about the Astronauts, because they considered it to be a very embarrassing event for them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, NASA\u2019s plan to use a SpaceX vehicle for the return journey has remained consistent since it was announced in <\/strong>August, during the Biden administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n