Butch, Suni and Nick Stay Focused on ISS Mission, Not Politics

The three NASA astronauts on the Crew-9 mission aboard the International Space Station are staying focused on their work, not the earthly politics recently inserted into debate about their return home. Butch Wilmore, Suni Williams and Nick Hague along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov are just waiting for their replacements to arrive next week so they can come back to Earth and rejoin their families and friends after a successful ISS expedition.

The three answered questions from reporters today floating in their home-away-from-home 250 kilometers (440 miles) above Earth. Butch and Suni have been there since June and Nick since September.

All are experienced NASA astronauts and veterans of previous ISS missions. Butch and Suni are there for the third time, Nick for the second. Butch and Suni are former Navy test pilots. Nick is a Colonel in the U.S. Space Force and the only NASA astronaut to experience a launch abort on his way to orbit when a Russian Soyuz rocket malfunctioned two minutes and 45 seconds after liftoff in October 2018. The Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft automatically separated from the rocket and carried Nick and Russian cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin safely back to Earth. They tried again in February 2019 and made it all the way to the ISS that time.

Butch and Suni arrived on the ISS on June 6, the day after launching on the Boeing Starliner Crew Flight Test, the first crewed flight of Starliner. The spacecraft experienced propulsion failures during docking, however.  After two months of ground- and on-orbit testing, by August NASA was not convinced Starliner was safe enough to bring them back to Earth and decided to keep them on the ISS to become part of the next regular crew rotation, Crew-9, which was getting ready to launch in September.

That meant they would stay for eight months instead of the originally-planned eight days, but as they have said consistently they were always prepared to stay longer because as astronauts and test pilots they know contingencies happen. Two of the original Crew-9 members also had to adapt. Commander Zena Cardman and mission specialist Stephanie Wilson had to give up their seats so Butch and Suni could use them to come home. Adapting to change is “part of our jobs” as NASA Chief Astronaut Joe Acaba says.

Butch and Suni’s extended stay on the ISS took on a political twist in January when SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk, a close confidant of President Trump, abruptly asserted that the Biden Administration left them on ISS for political reasons and Trump called on Musk to bring them home as soon as possible. In February, Musk engaged in a heated exchange on X with ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen, a former ISS commander, after Musk again asserted politics was the reason for the extended mission and he had offered to send a spacecraft to bring them home last year but it was rejected.

Butch and Suni’s mission initially was extended from June to February because of NASA’s decision that Starliner wasn’t safe enough to bring them home and to make them part of the next regular crew rotation mission, Crew-9.

Crew-9 was due to return last month after their replacements on Crew-10 arrived.

Crew-9’s mission was extended from February to late March or early April because Crew-10’s launch was delayed by SpaceX.

Crew-10 was going to fly on a brand new Crew Dragon, but it’s not ready yet. Four Crew Dragons are operational: Freedom, Endeavour, Resilience and Endurance. Freedom delivered Nick and Russian cosmonaut Aleksander Gorbunov to the ISS in September and is still docked there ready to bring all of Crew-9 home at any time.

After the Musk and Trump complaints, SpaceX and NASA agreed to use an existing spacecraft, Crew Dragon Endurance, instead of the new one for Crew-10 in order to accelerate their launch into mid-March. So Crew-9 will be coming home about two weeks earlier than the most recent publicly announced schedule. The status of the new Crew Dragon and when it might make its flight flight hasn’t been revealed by SpaceX.

Asked today if they thought their mission was affected by politics, Butch said politics is “part of life” and “there’s an important reason we have a political system” and “we’re behind it 100%.”  He doesn’t know the specifics of what happened with the decision to keep them on the ISS, but he has “the utmost respect for Mr. Musk” and “respect and admiration for our President of the United States, Donald Trump. We appreciate all that they do for us.” He has “no information” on what Musk may or may not have offered, but believes Musk is “absolutely factual.”

Overall he doesn’t think politics was a factor, however.

“From my standpoint, politics is not playing into this at all. From our standpoint … we came up prepared to stay long, even though we planned to stay short. That’s what we do in human spaceflight. That’s what your nation’s human spaceflight program is all about, planning for the unknown, unexpected contingencies. And we did that.  We floated … right into Crew-9 and Expedition 72 and it was a seamless transition because we had planned ahead for it and we were prepared.” — NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore

Musk also posted on X that the ISS should be terminated two years from now instead of in 2030 as planned, asserting it’s “served its purpose.” Suni sees it differently. Noting that she and Butch were part of the crews that helped build the ISS over the years, she’s amazed at what it’s capable of now.

“This place is ticking. It’s just really amazing. So I would actually say we’re in our prime right now. We’ve got all the power, all the facilities up and operating. So I would think that right now is probably not the right time to say quit. Call it quits. You know we have probably until 2030 in our agreements. And I think that’s probably really accurate, because we should make the most of this space station for our taxpayers and for all of our international partners, and hold our obligations, and do that world-class science that this laboratory is capable of.” — NASA astronaut Suni Williams

In answer to a question about what they think about when they look out the window at Earth knowing of all the geopolitical changes taking place since they’ve been in space, Hague said the lesson he’s learned is that all the people of Earth have more in common than differences.

“I see Earth as a small orb that’s in a pretty big, black vastness of space. There’s a lot out there. There are more stars than you can count. But the world looks pretty small when it’s in that perspective. And as you fly from continent to continent, you don’t necessarily see all of those borders. And the lesson, the realization that I always come away with is we have far more in common than we have in difference and common things bring us together. And if we’re smart, those differences that we have are differences that we bring to teams like the International Space Station and those differences make the team stronger.” — NASA astronaut Nick Hague

The ISS has been permanently occupied by international crews rotating on roughly six-month missions for the past 24 years. Since SpaceX’s Crew Dragon entered service in 2020, the regular crew complement is seven people, four who arrive and depart on Crew Dragon and three who fly on Russia’s Soyuz. Each spacecraft has mixed American-Russian crews (and sometimes astronauts from other countries) to ensure that at least one from each country is aboard at any time to operate the interdependent Russian and American segments.

“Roughly” is a key word because missions can be extended for days, weeks or months for many reasons.

The three astronauts who were aboard at the time of the Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy in 2003 — two Americans and a Russian — stayed an extra two months while NASA and Roscosmos figured out how to bring them home with the space shuttle grounded. Others have pulled double six-month shifts because Russia decided to use some Soyuzes for short-duration tourist missions or in the case of Soyuz MS-22, a spacecraft malfunction. A new spacecraft had to be sent up and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and his two Russian crewmates ended up staying for a year instead of six months. Rubio set a new U.S. record for continuous time in space, 371 days.

Interestingly, five of the members of the current ISS crew, Expedition 72, plus the head of NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate (SOMD) that oversees the ISS program, are veterans of unexpected changes to their space missions.

The two Americans on the ISS at the time of the Columbia tragedy were Ken Bowersox and Don Pettit. Bowersox is now the SOMD Associate Administrator.

Pettit, the oldest active member of NASA’s astronaut corps, is aboard the ISS right now as part of the Soyuz MS-26 crew with Russian cosmonauts Ivan Vagner and Aleksey Ovchinin.

Ovchinin was the cosmonaut on the aborted Soyuz MS-10 mission with Nick Hague in 2018.   They are together again on Expedition 72 though they arrived on different spacecraft this time.

And Butch and Suni, of course, arrived on Starliner and are coming home on Crew Dragon Freedom, which has been docked at the ISS since September ready and able to bring them home at any time. They haven’t come home yet not because they are “stuck” or “abandoned,” but because they are waiting for their replacements on Crew-10 to arrive.

Crew-10 is scheduled to launch on March 12.  NASA likes to have a five-day or so handover between crews, so Crew-9 should be coming home around March 18 or 19, weather permitting.

Fun fact: Butch and Suni are the only astronauts to fly on four different human spaceflight vehicles: the U.S. Space Shuttle, Russia’s Soyuz, Boeing’s Starliner, and, soon, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.

Butch flew on STS-129 in 2009, Soyuz TMA-14M in 2014 and Starliner CFT in 2024. Suni flew on STS 116/117 in 2006, Soyuz TMA-05M in 2012, and Starliner CFT with Butch.