NASA’s Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore want to clear up any cosmic confusion about their prolonged space trip.
Three weeks after President Donald Trump said the astronauts had been “virtually abandoned” on the International Space Station, where they have been for eight months instead of the eight days they were supposed to spend there, the two spoke about how they feel about their predicament.
“We don’t feel abandoned,” Wilmore, 62, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in a Feb. 13 interview. “We don’t feel stuck. We don’t feel stranded. We come prepared. We come committed.”
Floating beside Wilmore, Williams, 59, added the two were “doing pretty darn good, actually.”
Indeed, as experienced astronauts, spending time in space isn’t something they were unprepared for.
“We’ve got food, we’ve got clothes, we have great crew members up here,” she continued. “Of course, it was a little bit longer stay than we had expected, but both of us have trained to live and work on the International Space Station and I think we’ve made the most of it.”
Williams and Willmore initially traveled to the orbiting International Space Station on a Boeing Starliner capsule in June. However, their inaugural test mission experienced thruster failures and helium leaks before docking safely, prompting NASA to postpone their return to Earth and abandon the original plans to take the Starliner back home.
Now, they are set to travel back on SpaceX Crew-10 mission’s Dragon capsule, which will be launched to space March 12 for a science expedition.
“They’ll come here, rendezvous and dock,” Wilmore said. “We’ll do a turnover for about a week and we will return on or about the 19th of March.”
While Wilmore and Williams are setting the record straight, On Jan. 28, eight days after he was inaugurated, Trump said on his Truth Social network on Jan. 28 that he had asked close advisor and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk “to ‘go get’ the 2 brave astronauts who have been virtually abandoned in space by the Biden Administration.”
NASA had previously announced that Wilmore and Sullivan would return to Earth in early 2025 on a SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule back in August, three months before Trump beat former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election to succeed former President Joe Biden.
Wilmore and Williams, meanwhile, have stressed that they aren’t worried about their extra time in space and plans to return. In fact, they admitted that it was “a lot of fun” to float around.
“I like my crazy hair up here. It gets a little Einstein look,” Williams explained. “Both of us have lived here before and it is just amazing how when you come across the hatch after you’ve been here, it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, I remember what this is all like. I remember feeling what it’s like floating, and I think both of us adapted really quickly and I’m hoping the same will be true when we come back home.”
However, as Wilmore pointed out, after a lengthy stay they’ll face the same challenges all astronauts are greeted with upon their return: a reunion with gravity.
“It’s really gonna be different,” he noted. “When we get back, even to lift a pencil, we will feel the weight.”
Keep reading for more on the astronauts stuck in space…
June 2024
Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore launched into space on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft June 5, 2024, with plans to stay at the International Space Station for eight days. Shortly after their launch, the astronauts reported a “stable and isolated leak” in their propulsion-related plumbing, per the Associated Press.
While the leak remained stable throughout their travel to the ISS, four more leaks emerged and five thrusters—devices used for acceleration—failed. They were able to safely dock at the ISS, with the understanding that their mission would likely last longer than eight days.
August 2024
Two months after their faulty launch, NASA came forward with the debacle of the two astronauts stuck in space. At the time, the space organization was still trying to determine whether the Starliner would be fit for a return to space, and Boeing maintained at the time it should have been, with the company telling E! News in a statement, “If NASA decides to change the mission, we will take the actions necessary to configure Starliner for an uncrewed return.”
Meanwhile, former NASA official Scott Hubbard quelled public concern over Wilmore and Williams’ predicament, telling the Associated Press the astronauts—who have each been to space before on prior missions—are only “kind of stuck,” emphasizing that they have “plenty of supplies and work to do.”
August 2024
After NASA confirmed that Williams and Wilmore would return to Earth on a SpaceX mission in February or March, rather than attempting to fix the Starliner, their families spoke out.
Wilmore’s wife Deanna Wilmore told WVLT in August of her family’s predicament, “You just sort of have to roll with it and expect the unexpected.”
Meanwhile, Williams’ husband Michael shared that he didn’t think his wife would be unsettled by spending more time in space, telling The Wall Street Journal, “That’s her happy place.”
November 2024
Just before celebrating six months in space, Williams and Wilmore shared insight into their Thanksgiving celebrations aboard the ISS.
“We have a bunch of food that we’ve packed away that is Thanksgiving-ish,” Wiliams told NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt from the ISS on Nov. 27. “Some smoked turkey, some cranberry, apple cobbler, green beans and mushrooms and mashed potatoes.”
Williams also reiterated that she and Wilmore were doing just fine amid their extended stay in space.
“People are worried about us, really, don’t worry about us,” she added. “We’re feeling good, working out, eating right. We have a lot of fun up here, too.”
December 2024
After the astronauts celebrated six months in space, NASA confirmed they would be staying even longer than previously thought. Although the organization had originally planned for the duo to return in February, delays in the SpaceX mission that would retrieve them led their stay to be extended to March or April, NASA said at the time.
February 2025
In February, President Donald Trump claimed in a Truth Social post that Williams and Wilmore had been “virtually abandoned” in space amid their eight-day-turned-eight-month journey. However, following the headline-making comment, the astronauts pushed back on the president’s claim.
“We don’t feel abandoned,” Wilmore insisted to CNN’s Anderson Cooper in a Feb. 13 interview. “We don’t feel stuck. We don’t feel stranded. We come prepared. We come committed.”
Williams interjected during the interview that the pair were “doing pretty darn good, actually.”
“We’ve got food, we’ve got clothes, we have great crew members up here,” she continued. “Of course, it was a little bit longer stay than we had expected, but both of us have trained to live and work on the International Space Station and I think we’ve made the most of it.”
During the interview, Wilmore and Williams also confirmed they’d be returning to Earth when SpaceX launches its Dragon capsule March 12.
“They’ll come here, rendezvous and dock,” Wilmore explained. “We’ll do a turnover for about a week and we will return on or about the 19th of March.”
March 2025
Just days before her father was set to return, Wilmore’s daughter Daryn Wilmorespoke out on her father’s time in space—and how she felt about the delays in his return to Earth.
“It’s a bit mentally exhausting,” she told the Daily Mail in a March 6 interview. “There’s been issues. There’s been negligence. And that’s the reason why this has just kept getting delayed. There’s just been issue after issue after issue.”
Daryn expressed that her father was “bummed,” but otherwise doing well on the ISS, adding, “My dad is very resilient.”
March 2025
After their extended nine-month stay in space, Wilmore and Williams safely returned to Earth on March 18. After splashing down off the coast of Florida, the NASA austronauts, alongside fellow NASA crew member Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, were wheeled off the space capsule on stretchers—standard protocol for returning space travelers as they typically can’t walk right away upon their return.
“A lot of them don’t want to be brought out on a stretcher,” former NASA senior scientist John DeWitt told Live Science, “but they’re told they have to be.”
As for how the astronauts will spend their first few days back on Earth? Wilmore’s daughter Daryn gave some insight.
“He’s going to spend the next few days going in [for] tests,” she said in a March 18 TikTok video. “Lots of medical stuff because they’re still technically part of the experiment of human space flight. And just get re-acclimated to gravity and the routine back here on Earth, because it’s been very different than these past 9 months.”
March 2025
After the astronauts landed back on Earth following eight extra months in space, NASA addressed whether they’d get paid any overtime.
“When NASA astronauts are aboard the International Space Station, they receive regular, 40-hour work-week salaries,” NASA told People in a statement. “They do not receive overtime or holiday/weekend pay.”
As for what a regular 40-hour work-week salary looks like for an astronaut? It clocks in at anywhere between $84,365 to $152,258, according to the federal government’s GS-11 to GS-14 pay scale.
March 2025
Once, at long last, her father Butch returned home, daughter Daryn shared her reaction to finally being reunited with her dad.
“I’m making him his favorite dessert, which is pecan pie,” the college student said in a TikTok. “I actually have a list that’s all his favorite things and things that we used to do together to hopefully do them these next few days that he’s here before I go back to school, or in the coming months that he’s back.”
