NASA astronaut who was stuck at the space station for months retires within a year of returning
January 20, 2026
NASA’s Suni Williams — one of two astronauts stuck for months at the International Space Station — has retired. The space agency announced the news Tuesday, saying her retirement took effect at the end of December. Her crewmate on Boeing’s ill-fated capsule test flight, Butch Wilmore, left NASA last summer. They launched to the space station in 2024, the first people to fly on Boeing’s new Starliner crew capsule. Their mission should have lasted just a week, but stretched to more than nine months because of Starliner trouble. In the end, they caught a ride home last March with SpaceX.