Sunita Williams set to return home today after extended ISS mission

Washington, March 18 (IANS) Indian-descent American astronaut Sunita Williams, is scheduled to return to Earth Tuesday evening, ending an unusually protracted stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

A spacecraft carrying Williams and three other astronauts will undock from the ISS in a few hours and it will splash down off the coast of the American state of Florida at 5:57 p.m. US Eastern (around 3 a.m. Wednesday in India), according to NASA.

The crew of the spacecraft called Dragon is scheduled to undock from the ISS and close the hatch at 11:15 p.m. US Eastern (8:45 a.m. Tuesday in India).

.@NASA+ is live as four @SpaceX #Crew9 members board Dragon before closing the hatch and undocking from the station at 1:05am ET on Tuesday. https://t.co/mQZkNe8wxe

— International Space Station (@Space_Station) March 18, 2025

NASA will be live-streaming the Dragon’s return, as part of its joint programme with SpaceX, called NASA’s SpaceX Crew 9 mission.

For Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore, it will be the start of a journey they were supposed to undertake 10 months ago at the end of their eight-day mission to the space station.

Time to head home. 🌎

Crew-9 is scheduled to undock from the @Space_Station on March 18th at 1:05 am EDT. They conducted dozens of experiments during their stay aboard the International Space Station. Here are some of Crew-9’s scientific milestones: https://t.co/pgzCCwvSes pic.twitter.com/QqRNqlxZSG

— ISS Research (@ISS_Research) March 17, 2025

Their earlier schedule was delayed because of technical reasons, NASA has said.

Elon Musk, the SpaceX owner whose spacecraft is bringing back Williams and Wilmore, has suggested the two astronauts could have been brought back earlier with his help.

“They were left up there for political reasons, which is not good,” Musk said in an interview alongside President Donald Trump on Fox News recently.

❤️🚀🚀❤️
pic.twitter.com/aAkJRKsu1Q

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 16, 2025

Williams, who turned 60 in September, is the second India-descent American astronaut of international acclaim. The first was Kalpana Chawla. Just a few years older than Williams, Chawal died in the 2003 Columbia space shuttle disaster.

#Crew9 will be difficult to spot in the daytime as it reenters Earth's atmosphere, but if you want to keep an eye out for @SpaceX's Dragon as it heads home today, we have the map for you. pic.twitter.com/dGmSWXbOyv

— NASA (@NASA) March 18, 2025

Sunita Lyn Williams, as she is called, was born in 1965 to a father from Gujarat — Deepak Pandya — and a mother from Slovenia, Ursuline Bonnie Pandya (née Zalokar).

Williams made her first trip to the International Space Station in 2006, aboard space shuttle Discovery.