During the early-evening hours of March 18, a SpaceX capsule parachutes down into the coast of Tallahassee Florida, met by circling dolphins as well as the cheers of thousands of anticipate people. Assisted out of the spacecraft were Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, a pair of astronauts that had departed the International Space Station 17 hours prior. Before that, they had been stuck in space for nearly an entire year. Williams and Wilmore, with assistance, exited the capsule within an hour of splashdown. They were taken away in stretchers for medical checks, all while smiling and waving.
The story begins on June 5, 2024, when the duo boarded Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner as part of its first crewed test flight. Initially, Williams and Wilmore were only supposed to be gone for about a week. However, on the path to the ISS, numerous problems emerged: several of the thrusters failed while docking and NASA also announced three helium leaks.
Fortunately, despite the issues, the Starliner was still able to successfully dock with the ISS on June 6. As a result of the complications, NASA decided the crew would return in a different spacecraft, specifically one from SpaceX. And so, the Starliner returned to Earth on September 6, empty.
NASA initially planned to have a mission launch in February to bring a new crew to the ISS and allow Williams and Wilmore to return with them. However, this was delayed due to the need for more time to prepare a new SpaceX Dragon capsule. In late January, President Donald Trump asked Elon Musk to accelerate the astronauts’ return, pointing a finger of blame at the Biden Administration for the delay up until that point. Since the new capsule was still not ready to fly, it was subbed out with an old, already-used one.
Amidst all the political and public buzz, Wilmore and Williams maintained public appearances from orbit, coming out and saying that they held no hostility nor blame, and that they had supported NASA’s decisions from the beginning. The pair consistently stated that they didn’t mind spending more time in space, and responded to public perceptions of them being overlooked and neglected. “That’s been the rhetoric. That’s been the narrative from day one: stranded, abandoned, stuck — and I get it. We both get it,” Wilmore said. “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…If you’ll help us change the rhetoric, help us change the narrative. Let’s change it to ‘prepared and committed.’”
Williams reiterated similar sentiment to CNN, acknowledging that they had always known the risk of unforeseen circumstances and events existed, including understanding that there was a possibility their stay could have been extended. “Butch and I knew this was a test flight…We knew that we would probably find some things (wrong with Starliner) and we found some stuff, and so that was not a surprise,” she said.
Ultimately, the duo ended up spending a whopping 286 days in space. During this time, they circled the earth nearly 5000 times and travelled for 121 million miles. On and off board, Wilmore and Williams stayed busy by arranging cargo, conducting experiments, inspecting hardware, and checking in on the Starliner. The pair did 900 hours of research and 150 experiments. Joel Montalbano, deputy associate administrator of Nasa’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, says the work that Nasa astronauts do “benefits the nation” and increases the chance that Nasa will hit its goal of landing a person on Mars by the end of the decade.
Additionally, they space-walked. So much so, that Williams set a new record for the most time spent spacewalking over a career among female astronauts. She went on a 5-hour, 26-minute spacewalk with Wilmore and, with that walk, surpassed the record set by a woman for time spent on spacewalks. Williams now has 62 hours, 6 minutes of spacewalking, surpassing former astronaut Peggy Whitson, who had 60 hours, 21 minutes.
Currently, Starliner is still under engineering investigation and SpaceX is set to launch the next crew for NASA possibly in the summer of 2025.
Wilmore and Williams’ journey serves as an amazing display of resilience and adaptability in the face of unexpected challenges. The duo remained dedicated to their mission, contributing invaluable research and unwavering commitment. Their safe return marks both the success and challenges of human spaceflight. As we continue to develop space travel technology, the experiences of these two astronauts will undoubtedly shape the future of exploration.
Written by Saanvika Gandhari
