California [US], March 19 : NASA astronaut Sunita Williams along with Crew 9 astronauts, are set to return to Earth aboard SpaceX's Dragon Freedom after their mission, originally planned for a week, was extended to over nine months, with the spacecraft scheduled to land in the Gulf of America near Tallahassee at 5:57 pm (ET), according to a SpaceX engineer, CNN reported.
A crew operations resource engineer (CORE) at SpaceX's headquarters in California confirmed the schedule.
https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1902099902135726597
NASA's Crew Dragon capsule, carrying Williams and Crew 9, closed its small, gumdrop-shaped nose cone ahead of re-entry. The cap had remained open since the spacecraft launched from Florida in September 2024.
"We are hearing confirmation that the nose cone is closed, and everything was nominal, or as expected, with that closure. So we begin the second half of entry," officials said on the event livestream.
"Crew9's deorbit burn is underway. This eight-minute thruster fire will place SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft on a precise trajectory to its final splashdown site off the coast of Florida about 45 minutes from now," NASA said in a post on X.
https://x.com/NASA/status/1902106710111605020
Wilmore and Williams initially launched into space in June on a test flight of Boeing's Starliner spacecraft. However, NASA later deemed it too risky to bring them back in the same vehicle. Instead, they are returning with SpaceX's Crew-9, a routine International Space Station (ISS) staff rotation mission, alongside NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.
Crew-9 was able to depart this week after four Crew-10 astronauts arrived at the ISS on Sunday, taking over station duties.
Wilmore and Williams' prolonged mission also became a political flashpoint. Former US President Donald Trump and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk made vague claims that the company could have returned the astronauts earlier but was allegedly blocked by the administration led by former US President Joe Biden, CNN reported.