On Saturday (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.
The return flight — which will ditch the troubled Boeing Starliner spacecraft that the crew rode to the ISS, in favor of a SpaceX vehicle — has no confirmed date. However, in the best-case scenario of an early-February return, the Starliner crew's time in space will amount to no fewer than 240 consecutive days since the spacecraft's launch on June 5, 2024. A March departure could bump that number up to nearly 270 days.
