spacetoday.net: Crew-9 returns from ISS

Posted: Sun, Mar 23, 2025, 9:49 AM ET (1349 GMT)
A Crew Dragon returned four people from the International Space Station Tuesday, including two who were on the station far longer than originally planned. The Crew-9 mission ended with a splashdown of the Crew Dragon spacecraft Freedom at 5:57 p.m. Eastern off the Florida coast near Tallahassee, nearly 17 hours after departing the ISS. The Crew Dragon returned NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, who launched to the station on that spacecraft in September, and NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who arrived on the ISS in June on the Boeing CST-100 Starliner test flight. The return of Wilmore and Williams, often mischaracterized as being "stranded" on the ISS, became a political story as President Trump said he worked to bring the two home earlier. NASA officials said they followed a plan announced last August to bring the two back at the end of the Crew-9 mission, but that Trump's interest "gave us some energy" as they carried out those plans.