Whatever happened to the astronauts Boeing's Starliner left in orbit?

In June 2024, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams blasted off on Boeing's Starliner for a planned short-duration crewed test flight to the International Space Station. Instead, an engineering problem turned a demonstration flight into one of the most closely watched extended stays in modern spaceflight.

Helium leaks and unexpected behavior from the spacecraft's maneuvering thrusters complicated the mission. After weeks of ground tests and reviews, NASA decided in August 2024 that Starliner would return to Earth without the astronauts. The agency said bringing the crew home on that vehicle would pose risk it was unwilling to accept.

The capsule made its uncrewed landing at White Sands in New Mexico on September 6, 2024. Wilmore and Williams remained aboard the station, joined its research and maintenance work, and were assigned a ride home on a SpaceX Dragon as part of Crew-9.

On March 18, 2025, Dragon splashed down off Florida with the pair, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. According to NASA, Wilmore and Williams spent 286 days in space. They came home safely; the original Starliner test, however, had exposed problems that certification work still had to address.

The story kept moving after the splashdown photos. In September 2026 NASA and Boeing announced a revised path toward certification. NASA said an uncrewed Starliner-1 engineering-evaluation flight could take place in December 2026 or January 2027, with thermal and thruster-related changes under review. Those were plans, not an accomplished launch.

The astronauts' return is a closed chapter. Whether Starliner can reliably become a second routine American crew transport remains a separate, still-open engineering question. Spaceflight rarely offers the neat ending that the splashdown footage suggests.