While Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore’s situation is unusual, their return trip will be pretty routine, as they were already slated to fly home on a SpaceX capsule as part of a scheduled crew rotation.

The founder of SpaceX said President Trump had asked his company to return two astronauts aboard the space station to Earth “as soon as possible.” NASA said it would do that “as soon as practical.”

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have been stuck on the ISS since June 2024 after arriving on the Boeing Starliner spacecraft as part of the Crew Flight Test mission. NASA decided that they would come home on Dragon after " uncertainties " surrounding Starliner.