Wilmore and Williams return after unplanned nine-month ISS stay

At 5:57 p.m. Eastern on 18 March 2025, four main parachutes lowered Dragon Freedom into calm water off Tallahassee, Florida, and a saga the whole world had followed finally ended. As recovery boats closed in, a pod of dolphins circled the scorched capsule on live television. Inside were Nick Hague, Aleksandr Gorbunov, and the two astronauts everyone was waiting for: Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, home after 286 days on what had been sold as a roughly week-long test flight.

Wilmore and Williams had launched on 5 June 2024 aboard Boeing's Starliner for its first crewed flight test. Helium leaks and failing thrusters during the approach to the station turned the shakedown cruise into a months-long engineering debate, and in August 2024 NASA made the call: Starliner would fly home empty, which it did that September, and its crew would stay aboard the ISS. Crew-9 launched on 28 September 2024 with two empty seats reserved for the ride back.

The two test pilots refused the word 'stranded.' They folded into Expedition 72 as full crew members; Williams took command of the station, and on a January 2025 spacewalk with Wilmore she pushed her career total to 62 hours and 6 minutes outside, the most cumulative spacewalk time by any woman. By splashdown the pair had logged 121,347,491 miles and 4,576 orbits. Once Crew-10 arrived on 16 March, the way home was clear.

The hatch opened at 6:38 p.m., and the crew emerged into the Gulf evening to grins that matched Hague's description from inside the capsule. The episode reshaped American spaceflight: Boeing's Starliner did not fly crew again during the period, while NASA's two-provider strategy stood vindicated, since the system absorbed a failed spacecraft without losing a crew. Williams retired in December 2025 with 608 cumulative days in space, second all-time among NASA astronauts.