After their capsule undocked from the International Space Station (ISS), two astronauts stuck in space for more than nine months were finally headed home on Tuesday.
At 5:05 GMT (10:05am Pakistan time), the SpaceX craft bearing Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams broke out from the orbiting station, therefore concluding their protracted mission that has attracted worldwide interest.
American Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov accompany the NASA team onboard.
Now settling in for the 17-hour return to Earth, the crew was allowed to switch from their space suits into more cosy clothing.
Should all go according to plan, the capsule will use its parachutes off Florida’s coast for an ocean splashdown around 9:57pm GMT on Tuesday, after which a recovery vessel will pick the crew.
On what should have been a days-long roundtrip to test Boeing’s Starliner on its maiden crewed flight, Wilmore and Williams flew to the orbiting lab in June last year.
But the spacecraft returned empty after developing propulsion issues and was judged unsuitable for flying them back.
Age 62 and 59 respectively, ex-Navy pilots Wilmore and Williams were assigned to the NASA-SpaceX Crew-9 mission, when a Dragon spacecraft flew to the ISS in September with a team of two instead of the normal four to create place for the “stranded” duo.
Early Sunday, a relief crew known as Crew-10 docked with the station, their arrival greeted wide smiles and hugs as they floated across the hatch. Arriving crew-10 cleared the path for Wilmore and Williams to leave as well as Hague and Gorbunov.
Following long hugs with the crew still aboard the ISS, the quartet entered the capsule and closed its hatch on Tuesday.
“We will be waiting for colleagues and personal friends who stay on the station. Hague responded, “Crew-9 is going home.”
‘Unbelievable resilience’
Though ranked only sixth among US records for single-mission duration, Wilmore and Williams’ stay exceeds the required six-month ISS rotation.
Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov, who spent 437 straight days on the Mir station, holds the world record while Frank Rubio ranks highest at 371 days in 2023.
From a health standpoint, that makes it “par for the course,” says Rihana Bokhari of the Centre for Space Medicine at Baylor College.
effectively understood and effectively controlled are issues like muscle and bone loss, fluid changes, and readjustment to gravity.
“Folks like Suni Williams are actually known for their interest in exercise, and so I believe she exercises beyond what is even her normal prescription,” Bokhari said AFP.
Still, public interest and sympathy have been piqued by the unusual character of their prolonged stay: away from their homes and first without sufficient packed supplies.
“You might have a panic attack if you found out you went to work today and were going to be stuck in your office for the next nine months,” psychologist Joseph Keebler of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University advised AFP.
“These people have demonstrated incredible tenacity.”
Trump consults in
With President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who runs SpaceX, regularly implying former president Joe Biden abandoned the astronauts and rejected an earlier rescue attempt, their unexpected stay also became a political hot topic.
“They shamefully forgot about the Astronauts, because they considered it to be a very embarrassing event for them,” Trump said Monday on Truth Social.
Such charges have caused a stir in the space world, particularly since Musk provided no specifics and NASA’s timetable for the astronauts’ return has not changed after their crew-9 reassignment.
Trump’s strange comments, which refer to decorated former naval captain Williams as “the woman with the wild hair” and conjecture on the personal dynamic between the two, have also attracted notice.
“They’ve been left up there — I hope they like each other, maybe they love each other, I don’t know,” he remarked during a recent White House press conference.
