Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are set to return to Earth Tuesday evening after a nine-month stint at the International Space Station.
NASA said Sunday that it met with SpaceX, Elon Musk’s spacecraft company, to “assess weather and splashdown conditions” off the coast of Florida and is targeting the evening of March 18 “based on favorable conditions.”
“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 said in a press release.
Wilmore and Williams were initially set to spend about a week at the space station after serving as test pilots on the first crewed launch of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft in June.
However, problems with the Starliner prompted NASA to delay Wilmore and Williams’s homecoming, opting instead to have them return to Earth on SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission scheduled for February.
After some delays, SpaceX’s Crew-10 mission took off Friday evening from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, delivering a replacement team to the International Space Station. They docked shortly after midnight Sunday.
The replacement team includes NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, astronaut Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov.
Wilmore and Williams are set to return to home alongside NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.
Shortly after taking office, President Trump accused the Biden administration of having “virtually abandoned” Wilmore and Williams in space and said he had asked Musk, his close ally and SpaceX CEO, to “go get” the two astronauts.
“They have been waiting for many months on @Space Station. Elon will soon be on his way. Hopefully, all will be safe. Good luck Elon!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social in January.
