Aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams, Butch Wilmore, and Aleksandr Gorbunov returned to Earth Mar. 18, 2025.
Hague and Gorbunov left Sept. 28, 2024, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket, whereas Williams and Wilmore were launched June 5, 2024, with the Boeing Starliner spacecraft.
To compare their missions, Williams and Wilmore spent 286 days in space, traveling 121,347,491 miles and completing 4,576 orbits around Earth. Meanwhile, Hague and Gorbunov spent 171 days in space, traveling 72,553,920 miles and completing 2,736 orbits around Earth.
Malfunctions on the Starliners’ trip to the International Space Station made the initial eight-day journey into a nine-month one. This left Williams and Wilmore stuck, but past missions made the situation manageable.
During their time in space, the crew helped by working on maintenance while also conducting scientific experiments and technological demonstrations.
In late January 2025, President Donald Trump initiated and urged the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and SpaceX, an American space technology company, to accelerate the return trip. He criticized the Biden administration for allowing the delay to continue. Thus – through his actions – the astronauts were to come home a few weeks earlier than expected.
Their capsule parachuted into the Gulf of America – priorly known as the Gulf of Mexico – while the splashdown occurred in the Florida Panhandle, near the coast of Tallahassee. The astronauts were met by a group of curious dolphins before boarding the recovery ship.
After being dropped off from the ship and flown to Houston, the astronauts reunited with their families.
They will continue to be monitored and assisted as they adapt back to gravity, hopefully being released after a couple of days.
