What if you got stuck in space? For NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, a Starliner test flight planned for about eight days at the space station became 286 days.
We follow their real timeline with NASA's own footage: the thruster and helium problems, the empty Starliner flying home without them, the SpaceX Crew-9 ride with two empty seats, nine months of station life, and the splashdown, dolphins and all.
0:00 The ride home leaves
0:39 A test flight goes wrong
1:41 The decision: Starliner flies home empty
3:15 A new ride arrives, so why stay?
4:17 What space does to your body
5:38 Life goes on: holidays and spacewalks
7:01 Going home: splashdown and dolphins
8:02 Would you do it?
What this film does and does not claim: it is the real NASA timeline, told as "what if it were you". The day counter uses NASA's dates, counted from launch on 5 June 2024. The crew were never without a way home in an emergency; their return was scheduled with the station's crew rotations. Bone and muscle figures are NASA averages for long missions, not the two astronauts' own medical results. Exercise and crew-quarters photos of other astronauts (Nick Hague, Mike Fincke) are named on screen. Earth-from-orbit shots are NASA 2022-23 footage, labelled.
Sources
- NASA, "NASA Decides to Bring Starliner Spacecraft Back to Earth Without Crew" (24 Aug 2024)
- NASA Commercial Crew blog: Boeing Crew Flight Test launch, docking, undocking and landing (June-Sept 2024); Crew-9 launch and docking (28-29 Sept 2024); Crew-10 date changes (17 Dec 2024, 11 Feb 2025)
- NASA, "Welcome Home! NASA's SpaceX Crew-9 Back on Earth After Science Mission" (18 March 2025): 286 days, 4,576 orbits, 121,347,491 miles, 62 h 6 min spacewalk record
- NASA space station blog: Expedition 71/72 change of command (22 Sept 2024); spacewalks of 16 and 30 Jan 2025
- NASA, "The Human Body in Space" (bone density, fluid shift); NASA astronaut exercise pages
- NASA Starliner Crew Flight Test investigation report (Feb 2026), thruster findings
Visuals: NASA, Johnson Space Center, Kennedy Space Center; photographers Joel Kowsky, Aubrey Gemignani, Keegan Barber, Robert Markowitz. Splashdown drone and launch views from NASA broadcast records. Thumbnail: a real NASA photo of the uncrewed Starliner leaving, taken from a Dragon window on 6 Sept 2024. Music, sound effects and graphics are original.
Narration is a synthetic voice. Independent production, not affiliated with or endorsed by NASA, Boeing or SpaceX.
If it were you, what would you miss most from Earth? Tell us in the comments.
