Four astronauts were headed to the International Space Station on Wednesday, kicking off the return home of NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore.

Williams and Wilmore have been at the space station for nine months, much longer than the originally planned week stay.

Both astronauts were part of the first crewed test flight of Boeing’s Starliner in June 2024.

The craft encountered multiple problems on its way to the ISS, including malfunctions with its thruster as well as leaking propulsion. NASA decided to send the Starliner back to Earth with no one on board, leaving Williams and Wilmore at the ISS.

To enable Williams and Wilmore to come home, NASA switched crew rotations to open seats for the two on a SpaceX Dragon capsule.

The SpaceX Dragon capsule arrived at the ISS on Sept. 29 with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov on board. Hague and Gorbunov were sent on a six-month mission, so the plan was to send Williams and Wilmore back with them.

The new crew headed to the ISS are NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi and Russian cosmonaut Kirill Peskov.

The four astronauts are expected to ride aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, on a mission called Crew-10. The rocket was scheduled to lift off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The astronauts are expected to arrive at the ISS around 6 a.m. on Thursday, from there they will take over for those leaving.

Williams and Wilmore’s return has remained a priority for many, including SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump, who recently commenting on bringing them back home.

During their recent joint interview on “Hannity,” Trump and Musk said they were working to bring Wilmore and Williams home.

“We are accelerating the return of the astronauts, which was postponed kind of to a ridiculous degree,” Musk said. Trump chimed in saying, “They got left in space.”

“We don’t want to be complacent, but we have brought astronauts back from the space station many times before and always with success,” Musk said in responding to a question of whether he thinks his plans will be successful.

NASA, on the other hand, has maintained that the timing of their return was based on the safety of the crew and the ISS. The Crew-10 launch was originally scheduled for December until NASA delayed it until late March to allow more time for a new SpaceX Dragon capsule.

NASA and SpaceX decided to use a capsule that had previously flown to minimize the wait, as the Dragon capsules are reusable.

Usually, the handover period on the ISS takes several days as the outgoing crew members train and brief the new astronauts on the ongoing work on the space station. NASA and SpaceX will announce an official landing date and time once they monitor the conditions of the targeted splashdown sites off of the Florida coast.

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