The return of astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams from the International Space Station has been delayed again, pushing their homecoming to late March at the earliest.
On Aug. 24, NASA announced its long-awaited plan to bring astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams home from the International Space Station ( ISS ) no earlier than February 2025 — at least eight months longer than the initial eight-day trip they signed up for. Then, on Dec.
17, NASA announced yet another delay to the astronauts' anticipated homecoming; due to an issue with the SpaceX capsule that will ultimately bring them back to Earth, Wilmore and Williams' return flight has been bumped to late March at the earliest. The return flight — which will ditch the troubled Boeing Starliner spacecraft that the crew rode to the ISS in favor of a SpaceX Dragon crew vehicle — has no confirmed date. However, in the best-case scenario of a late March return, the Starliner crew's time in space will amount to no fewer than 270 consecutive days since the spacecraft's launch on June 5, 2024. An April departure could bump that number up to nearly 300 days. Nine straight months in space sounds like a lot, but it's far from a new record. Astronauts typically spend an average of six months aboard the ISS, where they conduct experiments and maintain the space station before returning to Earth, according to Live Science's sister site Space.com. However, missions can extend many months longer, for a variety of reasons, including long-duration experiments and unforeseen incidents. Who has spent the longest time in space?The record for the most consecutive days in space by an American goes to astronaut Frank Rubio, who spent 371 days aboard the ISS from September 2022 to September 2023. Rubio was initially expected home in March 2023, but his stay in space more than doubled after a small meteoroid or piece of space junk slammed into the Russian Soyuz spacecraft that was meant to carry him home in December 2022, causing irreparable damage
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