NASA and SpaceX are moving the return date for the Boeing Starliner crew members who have been on the International Space Station since June 2024. The Starliner mission reached the ISS, but not without issues, resulting in the crew members staying behind when the spacecraft returned to Earth.

Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams will join Crew-9’s return to Earth following Crew-10’s arrival at the International Space Station. Crew-9 will familiarize the onboarding crew with the ongoing experiments and science going on at the orbiting space lab. This allows for a safer transition of crews.

Once the handover is complete, NASA and SpaceX will prepare to return the Starliner crew back to Earth. If all goes as planned and the weather conditions are favorable, the crew could return as early as March 12, 2025. Originally, the plan was for the two astronauts to return in February 2025.

Starliner’s Journey

After years of delays, Boeing’s Starliner capsule took off on its inaugural flight from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on June 5, 2024. During the 25-hour flight, however, engineers discovered five helium leaks in the system that pressurized the spacecraft’s propulsion system and five thruster failures in its reaction-control system.

NASA decided to bring the Starliner capsule back to Earth, which made its way home on September 6, 2024. Since then, Wilmore and Williams have been helping the incoming crews at the ISS with experiments, most recently joining NASA’s SpaceX crew-9 members: NASA astronauts Zena Cardman, Nick Hague, and Stephanie Wilson, along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.

Wilmore and Williams will return to Earth with the aforementioned crew-9 members aboard a previously flown SpaceX Dragon spacecraft called Endurance. This will be the fourth mission to the station for this Dragon, which previously supported the agency’s Crew-3, Crew-5, and Crew-7 flights.