TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 touched down in the Gulf of Mexico off Tallahassee at 5:57 p.m. EDT on March 18, 2025, wrapping up the agency’s ninth commercial crew mission to the International Space Station. Aboard the SpaceX Dragon Freedom, NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams, and Butch Wilmore, alongside Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, emerged from months in orbit, retrieved by SpaceX recovery teams and bound for Houston’s Johnson Space Center to reunite with family. Their return, accelerated by a month per President Trump’s directive, caps a saga of science, spacewalks, and stamina.
The quartet’s journey split into two launches. Hague and Gorbunov blasted off September 28, 2024, on a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral, docking to the ISS’s Harmony module a day later. Williams and Wilmore, originally aboard Boeing’s Starliner for its June 5 test flight, joined them after NASA rerouted their return via Crew-9 in August following Starliner’s uncrewed descent. Together, they undocked at 1:05 a.m. Tuesday, splashing down after a mission that logged millions of miles—121 million for Williams and Wilmore over 286 days, 72 million for Hague and Gorbunov over 171.
“We are thrilled to have Suni, Butch, Nick, and Aleksandr home after their months-long mission conducting vital science, technology demonstrations, and maintenance aboard the International Space Station,” said NASA acting Administrator Janet Petro in a statement. “Through preparation, ingenuity, and dedication, we achieve great things together for the benefit of humanity, pushing the boundaries of what is possible from low Earth orbit to the Moon and Mars.” Their work included over 900 hours of research—150+ experiments like plant growth, stem cell studies, and microorganism sampling—plus two spacewalks. Williams, now fourth all-time with 62 hours and 6 minutes outside, swapped an antenna and patched an X-ray telescope with Wilmore and Hague.
The Freedom Dragon, a veteran of Crew-4 and two Axiom missions, heads back to Cape Canaveral for refurbishment, its fourth flight proving the Commercial Crew Program’s mettle. Launched in 2014, the program—partnered with SpaceX and Boeing—has slashed costs and boosted research time aloft, per NASA’s site, paving the way for lunar and Martian ambitions. Williams and Wilmore’s 4,576 orbits nearly doubled Hague and Gorbunov’s 2,736, with Gorbunov marking his first spaceflight against the trio’s combined 1,446 days in orbit.
Crew-9’s splashdown trails Crew-10’s March 16 docking, keeping the ISS humming. For Williams, who broke the female spacewalking record, and her seasoned crewmates, it’s a homecoming etched in microgravity and mission patches.
