NASA Astronauts Returned to Earth aboard A SpaceX Dragon Spacecraft

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore, Sunita "Suni" Williams, and Nick Hague, along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, recently returned to Earth aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. This mission, known as Crew-9, concluded on March 18, 2025, with a successful splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida, at 5:57 p.m. EDT (2157 GMT). The crew had been aboard the International Space Station (ISS) for an extended period, with Wilmore and Williams spending over nine months in space—far longer than their originally planned eight-day test mission—due to issues with Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, which forced NASA to arrange their return via SpaceX.

The Dragon spacecraft, named "Freedom," undocked from the ISS at 1:05 a.m. EDT on March 18, completing a 17-hour journey back to Earth. After splashing down under parachutes, recovery teams assisted the astronauts out of the capsule, a standard procedure following long-duration missions as their bodies readjust to gravity. This marked the end of NASA's ninth commercial crew rotation mission with SpaceX, highlighting the company's role in providing reliable crew transportation to and from the ISS. The astronauts are now set to return to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston for further recovery and debriefing.