2 Astronauts Blasted Off to Space for Short Mission. They Ended Up Being 'Stranded' for Nearly 300 Days

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On June 5, 2024, two NASA astronauts set off in a Boeing Starliner spacecraft for a trip that turned into a nine-month stay at the International Space Station
The Starliner faced helium leaks and issues with the reaction control thrusters as it approached the space station — and over the coming months, their return home kept getting delayed
286 days later, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams returned to Earth on March 18Back in June 2024, two NASA astronauts had no idea that their mission, which was supposed to take less than two weeks, would turn into a nine-month stay at the International Space Station.
One year later after liftoff, PEOPLE is looking back at the Boeing Starliner saga.
Even before Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams launched into space on June 5, 2024 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, their mission faced a series of delays.
That May, the astronauts were strapped into the spacecraft and just hours away from launch when the flight was canceled because of an issue with the rocket that helped propel the vehicle, according to NBC News. While working to address the issue, a helium leak in the propulsion system was discovered, NASA reported at the time.
Almost a month later, on June 1, the spacecraft was less than four minutes away from liftoff when the ground launch sequencer — the computer that launches the rocket — triggered an automatic hold. A launch the following day was also scrubbed.
After successfully launching into space, the astronauts arrived at the ISS the next day. But mechanical problems with their spacecraft quickly set off another series of delays that resulted in them spending 286 days in space.
As they arrived at the space station, the Starliner faced helium leaks and issues with the reaction control thrusters, Boeing said at the time.
NASA and Boeing then announced on June 18, that the crew would need to remain in space for at least a week longer than expected.
"We want to give our teams a little bit more time to look at the data, do some analysis, and make sure we're really ready to come home," Steve Stich, manager of NASA's commercial crew program, said during a media teleconference at the time.
But that timeframe came and went — and months later, Wilmore and Williams were still in space.
In August — 63 days into the mission — NASA announced that there was a chance that they would remain in space until 2025. By the end of the month, NASA announced that that they had decided that they had decided to bring the Starliner back to Earth without the crew, who would would remain at the ISS until February 2025.
'They will fly home aboard a Dragon spacecraft with two other crew members assigned to the agency's SpaceX Crew-9 mission,' a spokesperson for NASA said.
The duo welcomed the SpaceX crew, which consisted of NASA's Nick Hague and the Russian Space Agency's Alexander Gorbunov, to the ISS on Sept. 30.
While in space, the astronauts celebrated Thanksgiving — complete with a dehydrated food feast —and Christmas, voted in the 2024 presidential election and spoke with the media. During a press conference from space in early March, Williams even described her time at the ISS as 'fun.'
'Every day is interesting because we're up in space and it's a lot of fun,' she said, but added that "the hardest part is having the folks on the ground have to not know exactly when we're coming back.'
About seven months after she arrived at the ISS, Williams took her first space walk in January 2025 — and that same month, President Donald Trump claimed that the astronauts had been "abandoned" by the Biden administration and that he had personally asked Elon Musk and SpaceX to bring them back.
'Terrible that the Biden administration left them there so long,' Musk wrote in a social media response posted on X, the social media platform he owns, echoing Trump's rhetoric.
(Despite their remarks, NASA had, of course, already been collaborating with SpaceX for months on a plan to bring the astronauts home — and back in December, NASA set late March as a target for their return.)
NASA had long pushed back on the idea that the astronauts were "stranded," and after Trump's remarks, the astronauts seconded that.
"That's been the narrative from day one: stranded, abandoned, stuck," Wilmore told CNN's Anderson Cooper from the International Space Station on Feb. 13.
"But that is, again, not what our human spaceflight program is about," he added. "We don't feel abandoned, we don't feel stuck, we don't feel stranded."
Finally, the pair started their journey back to Earth alongside Hague and Gorbunov on March 18, undocking from the ISS "right on time" early in the morning, splashing down hours hours later that same day.
In their first interview after their return, both Williams and Wilmore spoke about having to be flexible in real-time as the situation unfolded.
"My first thought was, 'We just gotta pivot,' you know?" Williams told Fox News. "If this was the destiny, if our spacecraft was going to go home, based on decisions made here, we were going to be up there 'til February, I was like, 'Okay, let's make the best of it.' "
"It's not about me," Wilmore added. "It's not about my feelings. It's about what this human space flight program is about. It's our national goals. And I have to wrap my mind around, what does our nation need out of me right now?"
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In a separate interview with the BBC, they both said that although the idea of never coming home 'definitely went through our minds."
But, Williams added, through it all, they 'knew nobody was going to just let us down" and that, "everybody had our back and was looking out for us.'
Read the original article on People