When the NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore arrived at the International Space Station in June, they expected to stay for maybe a few weeks.
Instead, they’ve been up there for nine months. In a few hours, they will head home.
Ms. Williams, Mr. Wilmore and two other astronauts will board a SpaceX capsule on Monday night for a journey back to Earth that will last 17 hours.
During their months in space, people have described Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore as stranded, while NASA has called that characterization incorrect. Elon Musk and President Trump have even suggested that the pair were abandoned and forgotten in space by the Biden administration for political reasons.
The astronauts themselves dispute that notion.
“It’s work. It’s fun. It’s been trying at times, no doubt,” Mr. Wilmore said in an interview with Michael Barbaro, a host of “The Daily.” “But ‘stranded?’ No. ‘Stuck?’ No. ‘Abandoned?’ No.”
Here’s what else to know about the flight and how it will proceed.
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Boarding: At about 10:45 p.m. Eastern time, NASA will begin streaming its coverage of the astronauts boarding the Crew Dragon spacecraft and the closing of the hatch. The agency’s video feed will air on NASA+, which you can also watch in a video player in this blog.
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Departure: The vehicle and astronauts will undock from the station around 1:05 a.m. on Tuesday. NASA will begin streaming coverage of the undocking sequence at 12:45 a.m.
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Splashdown: At approximately 5:57 p.m. on Tuesday, the astronauts’ capsule will splash down off Florida’s Gulf Coast. Crews will recover their vehicle and help them exit onto a ship. Soon after, the four will be flown to Houston, the home of the Johnson Space Center, which is the hub of NASA’s human spaceflight operations.
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The crew: Also in the Crew Dragon will be Nick Hague of NASA and Aleksandr Gorbunov of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency. Mr. Hague is the commander of the flight, and Mr. Gorbunov is the pilot. The mission is called Crew-9 because it is the ninth such mission SpaceX has flown taking astronauts for extended stays on the space station.
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The mission: Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore went to space to test Starliner, a Boeing spacecraft that was to provide NASA with a second American option to get astronauts to and from orbit. After the spacecraft experienced problems with its propulsion system, NASA sent it back to Earth in September with no crew aboard. Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore then became full crew members of the space station, conducting science experiments and performing upkeep. It has been continuously occupied by astronauts for almost 25 years.
