'Stranded' Starliner astronauts finally have a return date — and it's sooner than expected

Stranded Starliner astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams finally have a return date to head back to Earth, and it's a few weeks earlier than previously expected.

NASA announced Tuesday (Feb. 11) that the two astronauts, who hitched a ride to the International Space Station (ISS) on a Boeing Starliner spacecraft last June, will head home on a SpaceX Dragon capsule that will leave Earth with the ISS Crew-10 on Wednesday, March 12. After a few days' handover period, Williams and Wilmore will leave the ISS with the rest of the Crew-9 mission, after having spent about 250 consecutive days in orbit.

Williams and Wilmore were initially meant to spend about a week in space, but problems with the propulsion and helium systems on their Boeing Starliner led NASA to return the capsule to Earth empty after three months of troubleshooting couldn't resolve the issues. The capsule ended up landing safely in New Mexico on Sept. 7, 2024. However, a watchdog report just released by the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel found that new thruster problems did appear during the descent. In October, The Wall Street Journal reported that Boeing is in the early stages of considering a sale of its space business, including Starliner.

Related: Boeing Starliner astronauts could spend nearly 300 days stuck in space — is that a new record?

As for the stranded pair, they have made the most of their time in orbit: Williams recently broke the record for the most nonconsecutive hours of spacewalking by a female astronaut.

A long-awaited homecoming

In December 2024, NASA announced that Williams and Wilmore would return on a newly designed SpaceX Dragon capsule in late March 2025 at the earliest. But now, the astronauts and the rest of Crew-9 will come home on a previously flown Dragon capsule, the Endurance. This will allow the swap between Crew-9 and Crew-10 to happen sooner while SpaceX continues to finalize the interior and final integration of the new Dragon capsule, according to NASA.

Along with Wilmore and Williams, astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will leave the ISS in March. They'll be replaced by NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov. The precise day of the return will be determined by weather conditions near Florida, where Endurance will splash down.