The American astronauts who have been stranded in space for seven months have hinted at the toll their unexpected mission is taking. 

Butch Wilmore, 62, and Sunita Williams, 59, were heard telling NASA bigwigs ‘eventually, we want to go home’ during a video call on Wednesday.

The pair first landed at the International Space Station (ISS) on June 5 and they have been stuck there ever since.

Their visit was only supposed to be eight days long. But due to safety concerns, NASA decided to send the Boeing Starliner spacecraft they arrived on back to Earth without anyone inside.  

In August 2024, it was decided that the left-behind astronauts would return home on a SpaceX aircraft in 2025. 

On Wednesday, Wilmore and Williams joined fellow astronauts Nick Hague, 49, and Don Pettit, 69, at the ISS to share more details about their lives in space.

The astronauts participated in a video call with NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy. 

Williams shared how she and Wilmore have been feeling about their shocking circumstances and adapting to their extended space stay. 

‘Yeah, eventually we want to go home, because we left our families a little while ago, but we have a lot to do while we’re up here,’ she revealed.

‘We’ve got to get all that stuff done before we go home.’

They are expected to return home in early April alongside the rest of Crew-9, which is the ninth crew rotation of the ongoing Expedition 72. 

Williams has become the commander of Expedition 72. Wilmore, Pettit and Hague are flight engineers, according to NASA. 

Wilmore and Williams did not seem worried about their conditions and debunked rumored safety concerns about a lack of clothes or resources.

When the pair first came to space in June, they were short on clothes because the Starliner needed more room for cargo, so some personal items had to be sacrificed. 

Wilmore said: ‘It was well known that when we came up here we swapped out a couple of components that we needed on the space station for some of our clothes. 

‘So we wore [the same] clothes for a while, but that doesn’t bother us, because, you know, clothes fit loosely up here. 

‘It’s not like on Earth where you sweat and it gets bad. I mean, they fit loosely, so you can wear things, honestly, for weeks at a time, and it doesn’t bother you at all.’

The astronauts have since been resupplied with clothes brought by Crew-9 in September.

Wilmore and Williams joined Crew-9 when Hague, the crew’s commander, and mission specialist Aleksandr Gorbunov arrived. They cannot leave until Crew-10 arrives in late March.  

While reiterating that the astronauts are not in harm’s way, Melroy cheekily said: ‘So what you’re telling us is you’re not channeling ‘Cast Away,’ and you don’t have a volleyball with a handprint on it that you call Wilson.’

Williams replied: ‘No, we’ve got a whole team up here, so we’re not worried about that. And there’s a lot to do as well with the team on the ground.

‘It’s just a great team, and, no, it doesn’t feel like we’re cast away. 

‘We had tons of science experiments with SpaceX 31 [a cargo resupply mission]. We’ve got space walks coming up. It was really busy when we were waiting for Nick to get up here. 

‘And it’s just been a joy to be working up here, particularly with our counterparts on the other end of the space station.’ 

Williams and Hague are set to go on a spacewalk later this month. A week after that, Wilson and Wilmore may go out for one as well. 

According to NASA, the goal of Expedition 72 is to ‘explore a variety of space phenomena to benefit humans on and off the Earth including pharmaceutical manufacturing, advanced life support systems, genetic sequencing in microgravity, and more.’ 

DailyMail.com has reached out to NASA for comment.