Crew-10 Mission: Return Trip for Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore

Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, both veteran NASA astronauts, arrived at the ISS in June 2024 aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft.

On 15 March 2025, NASA and Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center at 4:33 AM (IST) under the Crew-10 mission. This launch followed a postponement on Thursday due to a hydraulic system malfunction. The mission aims to deliver four new astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) and arrange the return of Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, who have been stranded for nine months.

Crew-10 includes four astronauts

NASA’s Anne McClain and Nicole Ayers, Takuya Onishi from Japan’s JAXA, and Kirill Paskov from Russia’s Roscosmos. This is the tenth crew rotation mission under SpaceX’s human space transportation program and the eleventh human flight to the ISS under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, including the Demo-2 test flight.

https://t.co/HeRVUPt3Il

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 14, 2025

Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, both veteran NASA astronauts, arrived at the ISS in June 2024 aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. This was intended to be an eight-day mission, but a technical malfunction in the Starliner left them stranded. Their return was originally scheduled for February 2025, but is now planned for a few days after the arrival of Crew-10. This arrangement was made via the Crew-9 mission in September, which sent two astronauts instead of the usual four to make room for Williams and Wilmore’s return.

Trump accuses Biden of deliberately abandoning the two astronauts

Meanwhile, the matter has become a subject of political controversy. US President Donald Trump and Elon Musk accused former President Joe Biden of deliberately abandoning the two astronauts and dismissing plans for their early return. Musk offered no concrete evidence for this claim. When Denmark’s astronaut Andreas Mogensen clarified the return plan via Crew-9 on X, Musk criticised him. Some retired astronauts supported Mogensen, while Wilmore described Musk’s statement as “factual,” although he claimed to be unaware of the details.

Trump also made unusual comments on the matter, referring to Williams as a “wild-haired woman” and speculating about a personal relationship between the two astronauts. The successful launch of Crew-10 is not only a technological achievement but also signals the end of Williams and Wilmore’s prolonged space journey. Their return is now only days away.