Everyone saw the headlines. Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore were only supposed to be gone for eight days. A quick "taxi ride" to the International Space Station (ISS) and back. But space is rarely that simple, and Boeing’s Starliner had other plans. When people ask how long were the astronauts stuck in space, they’re usually looking for a single number, but the answer shifted every single week for months.
It started in June 2024. The mission, known as the Crew Flight Test (CFT), was a massive deal for Boeing. They needed this to work. But as the spacecraft approached the ISS, thrusters started failing. Helium was leaking. What was meant to be a week-long stay turned into a saga that redefined "overstaying your welcome."
By the time NASA finally made the call to bring the Starliner capsule back empty, the timeline had exploded. We went from eight days to eight months. Think about that for a second. You pack a small suitcase for a business trip, and suddenly you're living in a zero-gravity laboratory until the following year.
Why a few days became most of a year
The technical reality of why they stayed so long is actually pretty fascinating. It wasn’t that the ISS was broken. It was the "ride" home. NASA and Boeing engineers spent weeks at the White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico trying to figure out why the Starliner thrusters were overheating and shutting down. They literally built a test stand to replicate the exact pulses the spacecraft used during docking.
They found that a small Teflon seal was swelling, restricting the flow of propellant. It’s a tiny part, but when you’re traveling at 17,500 miles per hour, "tiny" can be fatal.
NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager, Steve Stich, had a tough choice. Honestly, it was a PR nightmare. But safety won out. In late August, NASA announced that Butch and Suni would stay on the ISS and hitch a ride home with SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission. This pushed their return date all the way to February 2025.
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So, to answer the big question: they will have spent roughly eight months in orbit. That is a massive jump from the original mission profile. It’s not just a delay; it’s a complete life upheaval.
The psychological toll of an unplanned "extended stay"
Imagine the logistics. You didn't plan for Christmas in space. You didn't plan for your kid's birthday or your anniversary from a satellite link.
NASA astronauts are built for this, though. They are literally trained to handle isolation and changing schedules. But there is a huge difference between preparing for a six-month stint and having one dropped in your lap. They had to transition from "visiting guests" to full-time station crew members. This meant taking over maintenance tasks, scientific experiments, and the daily grind of keeping the ISS running.
- They had to share limited supplies until a resupply craft could bring more clothes.
- Exercise becomes a job. You lose bone density and muscle mass if you don't spend hours every day on the treadmill and the ARED (Advanced Resistive Exercise Device).
- Food is mostly dehydrated. Try eating that for 240 days when you only expected to do it for eight.
The ISS is about the size of a six-bedroom house, but it feels a lot smaller when you can’t walk out the front door. Even so, Suni and Butch have been incredibly professional in their public briefings. They’ve repeatedly said they love being up there. Suni even took over as commander of the station during the stay. Talk about making the best of a bad situation.
How this compares to other "stuck" astronauts
While eight months sounds like a lot—and it is—it’s not actually a record. We’ve seen this happen before, usually due to technical glitches or political collapses.
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Remember Frank Rubio? He holds the actual U.S. record. His Soyuz seat was damaged by a micrometeoroid (or space junk), and he ended up staying for 371 days. He went up for six months and came back after a year. He missed basically everything on Earth that year.
Then there’s the famous case of Sergei Krikalev. He’s often called the "last Soviet citizen." He went up to the Mir space station representing the USSR, and while he was up there, the Soviet Union literally ceased to exist. He stayed for 311 days because the country that sent him didn't have the budget or the political stability to bring him down on time.
Compared to that, Suni and Butch have it pretty good. They have a guaranteed ride home with SpaceX, and the ISS is significantly more comfortable than the old Mir station was. But the how long were the astronauts stuck in space question still highlights a major vulnerability in how we get to orbit. We are still very much at the mercy of the hardware.
The SpaceX vs. Boeing factor
You can’t talk about this without mentioning the rivalry. It is awkward. Boeing is a legacy giant, and SpaceX is the "new kid" that ended up having to bail them out.
NASA’s decision to use the SpaceX Dragon for the return trip was a huge blow to Boeing’s reputation. To make room for Butch and Suni, NASA actually had to remove two astronauts from the scheduled SpaceX Crew-9 launch. Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson were bumped from their seats so that the Dragon would have two empty spots for the Starliner crew to use on the way back.
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It’s a complicated game of musical chairs played at 250 miles above the Earth.
What happens next for Suni and Butch?
The return is currently slated for early 2025. When the SpaceX Dragon undocks, it will be a bittersweet moment. They will have completed a mission that was never supposed to happen.
When they land, the recovery process will be intense. After eight months in microgravity, your body forgets how to be a human on Earth. Your inner ear is a mess. Your balance is gone. Most astronauts feel like they’re being crushed by gravity for the first few days. They’ll undergo months of physical therapy to regain the strength they lost.
Actionable insights for following space missions
If you want to keep track of how NASA handles these "extended" missions or check if the return schedule shifts again, here is what you should do:
- Watch the NASA TV live stream during docking and undocking maneuvers; they provide real-time telemetry that shows exactly how the thrusters are performing.
- Follow the ISS On-Orbit Status Report. It’s a daily blog post from NASA that tracks exactly what the crew is doing—from fixing toilets to running "Veggie" experiments.
- Monitor the SpaceX Crew-9 mission updates. Since this is now Butch and Suni's "bus" home, any delay in SpaceX's schedule directly impacts their return date.
- Check the "bone density" research papers coming out of NASA’s Human Research Program. They use the data from these unplanned long-stays to figure out how we can eventually survive a trip to Mars.
Space is hard. It’s a cliche because it’s true. The story of how long these astronauts were stuck is really a story about how we handle failure. We didn't lose the crew, and we didn't lose the station. We just lost a bit of time. And in the grand scheme of cosmic exploration, eight months is just a blink of an eye.