After spending more than 286 days in space, astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore safely return to the earth.
The two had flown to the space station on June 5, 2024, on a Boeing Starliner and returned to the earth on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft on Sunday.
Both the astronauts, who are former Navy pilots, had been sent to the space station, which is also known as the orbital lab, for an 8-day mission, but this mission had turned into a 9-month-long stay for them.
Both landed in the ocean off the coast of Florida as the space capsule descended to the earth, carrying the two astronauts along with NASA’s Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.
The entire crew took 17 hours from the orbital lab to land near Florida. NASA had deployed mobility aids where the space capsule splashed into the ocean.
Upon emerging from the space capsule, Sunita Williams waved and gave a thumbs up.
NASA shared a video of crew 9 undocking at 10:35 a.m. The space capsule initiated the deorbit burn at 2:41 a.m. before it landed near the Florida coast at 3:27 a.m.
Crew 9 has been replaced by crew 10 at the International Space Station after the Dragon capsule, which is owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, successfully managed to bring the two astronauts back to earth.
Responding to the success of the mission The White House stated that President Trump had kept the promise that he had made. Earlier, President Trump had accused the Biden administration of abandoning the two astronauts in space.
Their mission to the International Space Station had turned into a 9-month-long stay for the two astronauts as their Starliner capsule had developed some propulsion issues.
The dragon aircraft had been sent in September with a two-member crew instead of the usual four to make space for the two astronauts who were standard in space.
The mission faced a number of delays, but finally the Dragon spacecraft managed to dock at the space station on Sunday.
It has been stated that the two astronauts are expected to face several health challenges, including muscle and bone deterioration, vision impairment, and radiation exposure, after their long stay in space.
Astronauts spending months in space are said to be at risk of significant and often irreparable bone density loss. For every month spent in space, astronauts lose about one percent of their bone density. They are also at risk of radiation exposure, as the protection shield provided by the earth’s magnetic field is not available in space
