Sunita Williams Return Date, Time, Live Streaming: After 286 long days in space, NASA's stuck astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore strapped themselves to SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft and left the International Space Station (ISS) Tuesday morning for a 17-hour trip that will bring them back to Earth. Williams and Wilmore were accompanied by two other astronauts inside the SpaceX Capsule as it undocked from the orbiting laboratory at 1.05 am ET (10.35 am IST) on Tuesday. "They're on their way! #Crew9 undocked from the @Space_Station at 1:05am ET (0505 UTC). Reentry and splashdown coverage begins on X, YouTube, and NASA+ at 4:45pm ET (2145 UTC) this evening," NASA wrote in a post on X. They're on their way! #Crew9 undocked from the @Space_Station at 1:05am ET (0505 UTC). Reentry and splashdown coverage begins on X, YouTube, and NASA+ at 4:45pm ET (2145 UTC) this evening. pic.twitter.com/W3jcoEdjDG — NASA (@NASA) March 18, 2025 The four-person crew, formally part of NASA's Crew-9 astronaut rotation mission, is scheduled for a splashdown off Florida's coast at 3.57 am IST Wednesday. Earlier, it was slated for no sooner than Wednesday. NASA, in a statement said, “The updated return target continues to allow the space station crew members time to complete handover duties while providing operational flexibility ahead of less favorable weather conditions expected for later in the week.” NASA's astronaut pair had launched into space as Starliner's first crew in June for what to be a roughly week-long test mission. But their faulty Boeing Starliner craft with issues in the propulsion system led to cascading delays in their return home. Later, NASA decided to have them take a SpaceX craft back this year as part of the agency's crew rotation schedule. What happens after they reach Earth? After nine months, Williams and Wimore will be flown to their crew quarters at the space agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston, United States where they will undergo several days of health checks, as per routine for astronaut returns. They will be allowed to go home after NASA flight surgeons' approval. Upon splashing down, Wilmore and Williams will have logged 286 days in space - longer than the average six-month ISS mission length, but far short of US record holder Frank Rubio. His continuous 371 days in space ending in 2023 was the unexpected result of a coolant leak on a Russian spacecraft. Williams, capping her third spaceflight, will have tallied 608 cumulative days in space, the second most for any U.S. astronaut after Peggy Whitson's 675 days. Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko set the world record last year at 878 cumulative days. The mission has captured the attention of US President Donald Trump, who upon taking office in January called for a quicker return of Wilmore and Williams and alleged without evidence that former President Joe Biden "abandoned" them on the ISS for political reasons. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, a close adviser to Trump, echoed his call for an earlier return. SpaceX's Crew Dragon is the United States' only orbital-class crew spacecraft, which Boeing had hoped its Starliner would compete with before the mission with Wilmore and Williams threw its development future into uncertainty. Swept up in NASA's routine astronaut rotation schedule, Wilmore and Williams could not begin their return to Earth until their replacement crew arrived, in order to maintain adequate U.S. staffing levels, according to NASA. Their replacements arrived on Friday night - four astronauts as part of NASA's Crew-10 mission briefly put the station's headcount at 11. - With AP inputs
