Latest news with #SpaceXCrew-9
New York Post
07-08-2025
- Science
- New York Post
Astronaut Butch Wilmore retires from NASA less than 5 months after 286-day spaceflight
One of NASA's two previously stuck astronauts has retired from the space agency, less than five months after his unexpectedly long spaceflight came to an end. NASA announced Butch Wilmore's departure on Wednesday. Wilmore and Suni Williams launched last summer as test pilots on Boeing's first astronaut flight. What should have been a weeklong trip to the International Space Station turned into a stay of more than nine months because of Boeing's malfunctioning Starliner. 5 Astronaut Butch Wilmore waved as he returned to Earth in NASA's SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft on March 18, 2025. NASA 5 Wilmore and pilot Suni Williams smiled and waved before they launched into space on June 5, 2024 from Cape Canaveral, Fla. Getty Images Starliner came back empty, and Wilmore and Williams returned to Earth in March with SpaceX. Wilmore, 62, had already retired from the Navy. Williams, 59, also a retired Navy captain, is still with NASA. She joined Second Lady Usha Vance at Johnson Space Center in Houston earlier this week, taking part in a summer reading challenge for schoolchildren. 5 Wilmore spent the holidays on the ISS while he was stranded in space. X / NASA Astronauts 5 NASA's SpaceX Crew-9 mission returned to Earth on March 18, 2025. NASA 5 Wilmore is a veteran pilot and a graduate of the US Naval Test Pilot School. NASA Selected as an astronaut in 2000, Wilmore logged 464 days in orbit over three missions. His final spaceflight made up nearly two-thirds of that total: 286 days. 'Throughout his career, Butch has exemplified the technical excellence of what is required of an astronaut,' NASA's chief astronaut Joe Acaba said in a statement. 'As he steps into this new chapter, that same dedication will no doubt continue to show in whatever he decides to do next.'
Time of India
14-07-2025
- Science
- Time of India
BITM to livestream return of Shux
Kolkata: The Birla Industrial & Technological Museum will livestream the return of the Axiom Mission 4, piloted by group captain Shubhanshu Shukla. The event, scheduled to begin at 1.30 pm, will feature an open house quiz on spaceflight missions, an interactive science demonstration of rocket science involving Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon Grace Spacecraft, and a livestream of the spacecraft's re-entry into Earth's atmosphere with a splashdown off the coast of California in Pacific Ocean. Shukla and three crew members lifted off from Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on June 25 and docked to the International Space Station on June 26. Four months ago, Sunita Williams made a splashdown off the Florida coast in the Atlantic Ocean after the SpaceX Crew-9 capsule retrieved her and Butch Wilmore from the ISS, where she spent 278 days more than originally scheduled. BITM had livestreamed that event as well. tnn
Yahoo
06-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
2 Astronauts Blasted Off to Space for Short Mission. They Ended Up Being 'Stranded' for Nearly 300 Days
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?" Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories 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
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Unravelling claims Biden abandoned NASA astronauts in space for political gain
U.S. President Donald Trump and his adviser, Elon Musk, have repeatedly claimed that former President Joe Biden left NASA's Boeing Starliner astronauts Sunita "Suni" Williams and Barry "Butch" Wilmore in space for political gain. Trump has claimed efforts to transport the astronauts home began with his own administration. Musk also alleged, in multiple instances, that his astronautics company, SpaceX, offered to bring the astronauts back but were refused by the Biden administration. During a March 14 news conference, a NASA administrator said he "can't give a lot of clarity" about these purported conversations, but that NASA is a nonpartisan agency that "gets support from whoever's in office." However, the evidence suggests NASA was working on the Starliner crew's return to Earth as early as August 2024 and delays were due to safety concerns and technical difficulties. In fact, the SpaceX Crew-9, which brought the astronauts home on March 18, 2025, docked at the International Space Station in September 2024, months before Trump entered office and supposedly appointed Musk to oversee the rescue mission. The original announcement, dated August 2024, said Williams and Wilmore would "continue their work" on the ISS "through February 2025," suggesting it was always the plan for the crew to fly home in early 2025. While Wilmore said Musk's comments were "factual," he also said he had no information on any politically motivated delays, nor did he see any evidence of that from his perspective, suggesting he had no proof regarding the truth of Musk's statements. In a statement about Wilmore's and Williams' return, NASA's acting administrator, Janet Petro, said: "Per President Trump's direction, NASA and SpaceX worked diligently to pull the schedule a month earlier." Finally, there is no credible evidence that the Biden administration deliberately left the astronauts in space, nor is there documented proof that Biden turned down an offer from Musk's SpaceX to bring them home earlier. After astronauts Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Sunita "Suni" Williams finally landed back on Earth in the spring of 2025 — following a nine-month space odyssey that was meant to last little more than a week — rumors continued to spread that former U.S. President Joe Biden had chosen to leave them stranded in orbit and refused help from Elon Musk's SpaceX to bring them home. The first crewed test flight for the Boeing Starliner spacecraft launched on June 5, 2024, during Biden's administration. Since Trump's second term began in January 2025, he and his adviser Musk repeatedly claimed that after the capsule malfunctioned, Biden abandoned Williams and Wilmore and did not instruct NASA, the federal space agency, to bring them back. Musk also said the former president had declined the tech mogul's offer to retrieve the astronauts earlier. Social media users on various sites, including Musk's social media platform X and TikTok and Instagram, spread the rumor. In April, weeks after the astronauts returned, one X user responded to an interview Wilmore gave – in which he said he watched church services every week while in space – by writing: "Biden Abandoned the USA Astronauts in Space." Wilmore's daughter, Daryn Wilmore, broached the subject on TikTok, saying the delay to her dad's return was linked to "a lot of politics" and "negligence," but she couldn't say more because she didn't "know fully" what happened. Snopes readers wrote in to ask whether posts about these claims were true. Evidence suggests that — contrary to Trump's and Musk's assertions that they were responsible for finally retrieving the astronauts — NASA was discussing how to facilitate the Starliner crew's return as early as August 2024, and that the SpaceX capsule that brought them back was not only docked at the ISS by September 2024 but scheduled for an early 2025 return. We could find no documented proof to corroborate Musk's claim that he offered to rescue the astronauts earlier. In lieu of answering detailed questions, a NASA spokesperson, Joshua Finch, sent links to two of the agency's hourlong news conferences. In the first, on March 14, a reporter asked if NASA leadership could give "any clarity" on "claims that the previous administration refused to bring home the Starliner astronauts despite an offer being made." NASA's space operations associate administrator, Kenneth Bowersox, replied that he could not give "a lot of clarity there." "Those discussions, I wasn't part of, so I can't tell you if they did happen or didn't happen," Bowersox said (see 35:31). "All I can tell you is NASA is an incredible nonpartisan agency. We get support from whoever is in office. Our presidents always care a lot about what happens at NASA, and it's great to see that trend continue with our current president." Musk, SpaceX and Trump did not immediately return requests for comment. It was not possible to reach Biden; inquiries left with former Vice President Kamala Harris' office were not returned as of this writing. Here is a rundown of how the astronauts' long-beleaguered stay on the ISS – and the mission to rescue them – developed over the course of two presidencies. Trump, on his social media platform Truth Social, claimed in a March 17, 2025, post that he brought the astronauts home "long prior to the two week period originally approved by NASA," and that efforts to bring them home began when he asked Musk to "go up and get the abandoned astronauts because the Biden Administration was incapable of doing so." (Trump appeared to be referencing a prior timeline to bring the astronauts home a month later, although it is not entirely clear.) (Truth Social @realDonaldTrump) It was the latest in a string of claims from him (see 44:31) and Musk that they had "taken on the project" of bringing Williams and Wilmore home. Musk has repeatedly claimed SpaceX offered to bring the astronauts back under the Biden administration — but was rejected for "political reasons" because they didn't want to make him, as a Trump supporter, "look good." For example, see his Feb. 20, 2025, comments at the Conservative Political Action Conference (see 26:13) and his Feb. 28 comments on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast (see 1:23:34). Musk even got into a spat on Feb. 20 with a Danish astronaut, Andreas Mogensen, about this claim after Mogensen accused Musk of lying during a Feb. 19 Fox News interview, in which Musk and Trump both claim the astronauts were left in space by Biden (see 14:53). In response to Morgensen, Musk said "SpaceX could have brought them back several months ago. I OFFERED THIS DIRECTLY to the Biden administration and they refused. Return WAS pushed back for political reasons." Despite Trump's and Musk's claims that they were responsible for setting a rescue plan in motion, documentation from NASA reveals that the plan to get Williams and Wilmore home had been in discussion as early as August 2024. Starliner's technical problems began before its liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, but it was the issues it encountered before even docking at the ISS on June 6 that forced Williams and Wilmore to stay at the ISS. At first, NASA announced a steady stream of delays to the Starliner crew's return via teleconferences and news releases. The space agency cited the need to review technical issues, avoid other preplanned ISS spacewalks, or conduct additional testing (see 4:59). By Aug. 7, NASA officials acknowledged in a news conference that the Starliner crew may need to come home on a different spacecraft and discussed leaving two empty seats on the upcoming launch of the Dragon spacecraft – which was built by SpaceX and assigned to NASA's Crew-9 mission. Bowersox, NASA's space operations administrator, said (see 7:47): Our decision-making process at NASA can run really fast or it can take a while. What you find is that the speed of the decision can vary with the clarity of the information you're working with, the amount of uncertainty in the problem, the time that you have available, and the number of options that you have to deal with issues. If you talk Starliner in particular, we're in a – kind of a new situation here in that we've got multiple options. We don't just have to bring a crew back on Starliner, for example, we could bring them back on another vehicle. On Aug. 24, NASA announced Boeing's Starliner would return to Earth without Williams and Wilmore, and that the two astronauts would instead fly home aboard the SpaceX Dragon Crew-9 capsule. "The decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring Boeing's Starliner home uncrewed is the result of our commitment to safety: our core value and our North Star," said then-NASA administrator Bill Nelson. The SpaceX Crew-9 tasked with bringing Williams and Wilmore home docked at the ISS on Sept. 29, 2024 – months before Trump supposedly entrusted Musk with the rescue mission. It was stated in the original announcement that Williams and Wilmore would stay at the ISS to "continue their work formally as part of the Expedition 71/72 crew through February 2025," suggesting that it was a long-standing plan for the Starliner crew to fly back home in early 2025. (NASA took advantage of the extended time in space, asking astronauts to complete various experiments and research, including on stem cell technology, lighting systems and sleep rhythms.) Indeed, NASA's descriptions of Expedition 71 and Expedition 72 show that they were planned to run consecutively, the first from April 5, 2024, until Sept. 23, 2024, and the second from Sept. 23, 2024, until "Spring 2025." "If I step back to last year, this has been nine months in the making," said Steve Stich, NASA's commercial crew program manager, during a March 18 news conference on the astronauts' return (see 8:30). In a series of interviews from space, Wiliams and Wilmore addressed the rumors about their situation. In February 2025, CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper asked them if — as Trump had asserted — they had been "abandoned" by Biden (see 03:34, or archived here). Wilmore responded: We don't feel abandoned, we don't feel stuck, we don't feel stranded. I understand why others may think that. We come prepared, we come committed [...] So, if you'll help us change the rhetoric, help us change the narrative, let's change it to prepared and committed. A little more than two weeks before their flight home, Williams and Wilmore held an "in-orbit" news conference in which they fielded questions as to whether it was true Musk had offered to bring them back earlier. Wilmore said, "From my standpoint, politics is not playing into this at all" in response to a question about the timing of his return. When a Washington Post reporter asked again whether it was true Musk offered an earlier return, Wilmore appeared to contradict himself: I can only say that Mr. Musk, what he says is absolutely factual. I have no – we have no information on that though, whatsoever. What was offered, what was not offered, who it was offered to, how [those] processes went — that's information that we simply don't have. So I believe him, I don't know all those details and I don't think any of us can really give you the answer that maybe you would be hoping for. His comments suggest that he had no official proof that Musk had offered to bring them home earlier, or that Biden had refused that offer for any reason. A reporter for The Times of London alluded to some of these unfounded claims in NASA's March 18 news conference, asking why the organization had not "pushed back more emphatically" against a "fictitious narrative" surrounding the mission and "against the use of astronauts by one of its commercial contractors as political pawns." "Oftentimes, there may be things out in the press that may not be exactly what's happening," replied Joel Montalbano, a deputy associate administrator at NASA (see 51:47). "Our job is to fly these missions, and regardless of what you read in the press, our job is to fly successful missions, safe missions, and do the science we do onboard the International Space Station." However, NASA's acting administrator, Janet Petro, whom Trump appointed to the role in January, said in a statement shortly after the astronauts' splash-landing off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida, that "per President Trump's direction, NASA and SpaceX worked diligently to pull the schedule a month earlier." "This international crew and our teams on the ground embraced the Trump Administration's challenge of an updated, and somewhat unique, mission plan, to bring our crew home," she added. On March 31, 2025 — around two weeks after Williams and Wilmore landed — Williams and Wilmore sat down for an interview with Bill Hemmer, co-anchor of Fox News' "America's Newsroom" show. Referencing their February interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper, in which Wilmore had said they did not feel "abandoned," "stuck" or "stranded," Hemmer then asked if they had been "marooned" (see 08:40). Wilmore reiterated that they did not feel abandoned and even went as far as to take some responsibility himself: Okay, so, any of those — any of those adjectives, they're very broad in their definition. So, okay, in certain respects we were stuck, in certain respects maybe we were stranded. But based on how they were couching this — that we were left and forgotten and all — we were nowhere near any of that, at all. So, "stuck" — okay we didn't get to come home the way we planned. So, in one definition we're stuck but in the big scheme of things, we weren't stuck. We were planned, trained — but let me comment back on this other [assertion that], you know, "they failed you." Who's they? There are many questions that, as the commander of CFT [crew flight test], I didn't ask. So, I'm culpable. I'll admit that to the nation. Anderson Cooper 360. 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Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Astronauts Would Fly Boeing Starliner Again After Nine-Month Ordeal In Orbit
After spending nine months stuck on the International Space Station, the last thing I would consider doing is flying the same spacecraft that left me stranded there, but I'm not an astronaut. Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams stated that they would be happy to fly the Boeing Starliner again during a post-flight press conference on Monday. It's not an empty compliment, as NASA is open to scheduling another Starliner flight before the end of the year. Wilmore and Williams returned to Earth last month on NASA's SpaceX Crew-9 mission. The duo launched to the ISS on Starliner in July last year for an 8-day test flight. Once helium leaks and thruster issues emerged en route to the station, the mission stretched for months as engineers attempted to resolve the problems. The pair didn't blame anyone for how the ordeal played out but praised the positive aspects of Starliner. Notably, the spacecraft shares the traditional design philosophy of Boeing's planes, like how the pilots should ultimately be in control. Starliner featured a manual override to the spacecraft's autonomous flight capabilities. According to Space Police Online, Wilmore said: "I jokingly said a couple of times before we launched that I can literally do a barrel roll over the top of the space station. ... If we can figure out a couple of very important primary issues with the thrusters and the helium system, Starliner is ready to go." Read more: John Oliver Explains How All Of Boeing's Problems Can Be Traced Back To Stock Buybacks And Incompetent Leadership Wilmore and Williams are set to meet with Boeing leadership on Wednesday to discuss what happened during the test flight. Since Starliner's uncrewed return last September, NASA confirmed that 70% of the flight observations and in-flight anomalies have been closed. Despite the rapid pace in fixing issues, the problems with the thrust still persist. NASA aims to fly a certification flight later this year or in early 2026. The space agency wants to have a redundancy in capabilities and not be utterly dependent on the SpaceX Crew Dragon. Surprisingly, Boeing remains committed to fixing Starliner. NASA's Commercial Crew Program awarded Boeing a fixed-cost contract. If the aerospace giant exceeded the set budget, then it would have to cover the additional costs. The Starliner program was already over budget by $2 billion. Boeing considered ditching the final frontier altogether late last year by selling off its space division, but management decided to double down on Starliner. Want more like this? Join the Jalopnik newsletter to get the latest auto news sent straight to your inbox... Read the original article on Jalopnik.
