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Almost home: SpaceX Crew-10 relieves NASA astronauts 'stranded' on ISS
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have been aboard the ISS since June. They are expected to splashdown off the Florida coast on March 18.
![Four SpaceX Crew-10 members and seven Expedition 72 crew members join each other for a welcoming ceremony shortly after the SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft docked to the International Space Station and the hatches opened on March 16. [NASA]](/gc8/images/2025/03/17/49594-crew10-exp72-370_237.webp)
By BlueShift and AFP |
Two NASA astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) are expected to return home Tuesday (March 18), after a replacement crew docked with the orbital outpost Sunday.
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have been aboard the ISS since June after the Boeing Starliner spacecraft they were testing on its maiden crewed voyage suffered propulsion issues and was deemed unfit to fly them back to Earth.
"It was a wonderful day. Great to see our friends arrive," Williams told Mission Control shortly after her colleagues emerged onto the orbital lab.
The astronauts were shown on live TV embracing and hugging their counterparts in zero gravity on the space station shortly after their SpaceX Crew Dragon arrived at 12.04am EDT, while the station was roughly 418.4km over the Atlantic Ocean.
![The SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft carrying the four Crew-10 members approaches the International Space Station on March 16. [NASA]](/gc8/images/2025/03/17/49595-crew10-dock_copy-370_237.webp)
The NASA duo's Starliner had returned to Earth empty, without experiencing further major issues -- leaving them stuck for nine months after what was meant to have been a days-long roundtrip.
Crew-10 experiments
Their prolonged stay was significantly longer than the standard ISS rotation for astronauts of roughly six months.
But it is much shorter than the US space record of 371 days set by NASA astronaut Frank Rubio aboard the ISS in 2023, or the world record held by Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov, who spent 437 continuous days aboard the Mir space station.
Footage posted online by NASA astronaut Don Pettit showed the Crew Dragon vehicle approaching the ISS as it orbited the Earth.
Crew-10 comprises NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov.
They joined the Expedition 72 crew of NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Petitt, Williams and Wilmore, as well as Roscosmos cosmonauts Aleksandr Gorbunov, Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, bringing to 11 the number of crew aboard the ISS.
Crew-9 members Hague, Williams, Wilmore and Gorbunov are expected to return in an ocean splashdown off the Florida coast at approximately 5.57pm Tuesday, NASA said in a statement Sunday evening.
During its mission, Crew-10 will conduct a range of scientific experiments, including flammability tests for future spacecraft designs and research into the effects of space on the human body.