Sunita Williams Smiles, Waves As She Returns Home After 286 Days In Space
Astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore have returned home after their eight-day mission to the International Space Station turned into a nine-month-long stay. They flew on a Boeing Starliner to space on June 5 last year and returned in SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft this morning.
The space capsule deployed its parachute before a splashdown in the ocean off the coast of Florida. The two astronauts travelled along with NASA’s Nick Hague, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov for 17 hours on their journey home.
A NASA team opened the hatch and helped astronauts onto mobility aids.
Ms Williams was seen waving and flashing thumbs-up signs as she came out of the capsule.
The spacecraft initiated a deorbit burn – A manoeuvre in which the spacecraft fires its engines and turns around in the direction it is travelling, helping it slow down – at 2:41 am, before a splash down 44 minutes later at 3:27 am.
Live Updates: Sunita Williams’ Spacecraft Splashes Down Near Florida Coast
Crew-9 undocked at 10:35 am (IST), with NASA sharing a video of the spacecraft detaching from the space station. Elon Musk’s SpaceX was tasked with the responsibility to bring Crew-9 back to Earth. The Dragon capsule atop the Falcon 9 rocket was launched for the mission. Crew-10 has replaced Crew-9 at the International Space Station.
US President Donald Trump has accused the previous Biden administration of abandoning them. The White House responded to the mission’s success and said President Trump made a “promise and kept it.”
8 Days To 9 Months
Ms Williams and Mr Wilmore, both former Navy pilots, had flown to the orbital lab on June 5 last year on what was supposed to be an eight-day mission and the first crewed flight of a Boeing Starliner. They were left stranded after the Starliner capsule suffered propulsion issues. Deemed unfit to fly, it returned uncrewed in September.
Amid uncertainty over their return journey, NASA reassigned them to SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission, and a Dragon spacecraft was sent in September with a two-member crew, instead of the usual four, to make space for the stranded astronauts.