- The two stranded astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, are finally coming back to Earth.
- Their spaceflight has become such a drama that Elon Musk and President Trump are commenting on it.
- Meet the two astronauts who flew to space on a Boeing ship, got stuck, and are flying SpaceX back.
Two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams, have been thrust into the global spotlight since they flew to the International Space Station for a short stint to test Boeing’s new Starliner spaceship.
They were supposed to spend about eight days on the ISS for a demonstration flight. As they approached the station in June, though, the Starliner’s engines malfunctioned, kicking off the months-long saga of two stranded astronauts.
The duo — affectionately known as “Butch and Suni” in NASA lingo — is scheduled to finally come back to Earth next week.
NASA tapped SpaceX to carry them home, since the company has already successfully flown nine astronaut crews. The decision was made in August, with their return scheduled for early 2025.
Elon Musk said in January that President Trump asked SpaceX to speed up that schedule.
How stuck are the astronauts?
Wilmore and Williams have served a longer-than-average, but not exceptional, shift on the ISS. They’re about 100 days shy of the current record for longest US spaceflight, which astronaut Frank Rubio set just two years ago.
Though they have been stuck up there for technical and scheduling reasons, they weren’t “abandoned,” as Trump said on Truth Social.
After NASA sent Starliner back to Earth without them (it landed safely in the end), the duo took on the regular duties and routine of space-station staffers. They’ve received supply shipments from NASA and have had their SpaceX return vehicle docked at the space station since September.
NASA officials have said that the original eight-day timeline for their mission was always an estimate, and everyone involved knew it could go longer than that — though not quite this long.
Musk, however, has leapt at the opportunity for his rocket company to take over its competitor’s space mission.
At Trump’s behest, last month NASA shuffled around SpaceX’s spaceship schedule to bring the astronauts home a few weeks earlier than planned. They’re set to return to Earth aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon ship on Tuesday.
Who is Sunita Williams?
Like many NASA astronauts, Williams and Wilmore are both decorated US Navy test pilots.
“We’ve both been on deployments. We’re not surprised when deployments get changed,” Williams said in a September call with journalists. “Our families are used to that as well.”
Williams was born in Ohio and grew up in Needham, Massachusetts. She became a Naval aviator in 1989 and made a series of deployments overseas as part of a helicopter combat support unit, including for Operation Desert Shield and Operation Provide Comfort in the Persian Gulf.
She ran a detachment for Hurricane Andrew relief in Miami in 1992, then spent a few years conducting rotary aircraft test flights before becoming an instructor.
NASA selected Williams to be an astronaut in 1998, while she was deployed on the USS Saipan. She began training two months later. Her first gig at NASA was going to Moscow to work with Russia’s space agency on its piece of the International Space Station.
In her wide-ranging time at NASA, Williams has also spent nine days living in an underwater habitat and flown two previous missions totaling 322 days on the International Space Station.
When asked in the September call what she missed about Earth, she said, “of course, the things that we always miss: our families. I miss my two dogs, I miss my friends.”
She and her dogs live with her husband, Michael, and the couple enjoy some highly technical hobbies: working on houses, cars, and airplanes together.
Who is Barry ‘Butch’ Wilmore?
Wilmore is a retired US Navy captain, having spent the first part of his career flying tactical jets.
He’s completed 8,000 flight hours, 663 landings on an aircraft carrier, and four operational deployments. During Operation Desert Storm, he carried out 21 combat missions from the flight deck of the USS Kennedy.
He spent some time as a flight instructor at Edwards Air Force Base, California, before NASA selected him as an astronaut in 2000.
He’s previously flown two NASA missions: an 11-day mission on the Space Shuttle Atlantis in 2009 and a shift of 167 days on the International Space Station in 2014 and 2015.
Wilmore and his wife, Deanna, are originally from Tennessee. Now, the couple and their two daughters, Daryn and Logan, live in Texas.
During the September call, Wilmore cited a Bible verse about gaining strength from adversity as “how I feel about all of this.”
He later added, “We deal with all types of difficulties in all types of situations and it builds a great deal of fortitude and it builds a great deal of character.”
