Indian-origin NASA astronaut Sunita Williams and her colleague Butch Wilmore left for Earth today after spending over nine months on the International Space Station (ISS).
NASA shared a video on its social media platforms showing the two astronauts participating in their final photo op before entering the Dragon, the SpaceX spacecraft that will bring them back home.
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Sunita Williams, 62, and Butch Wilmore, 59, undocked from the ISS at 10:35 am IST to begin a 17-hour trip back to Earth.
The spacecraft will splash down off the coast of the American state of Florida around 3:27 am IST Wednesday.
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Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore Journeyed to the Space Station in June
The two astronauts flew to the orbital lab on June 5 last year for a days-long roundtrip to test Boeing’s Starliner on its first crewed flight. However, the spaceship developed propulsion problems and NASA deemed it unfit to fly them back. Instead, it returned uncrewed.
NASA then reassigned them to the NASA-SpaceX Crew-9 mission, where a Dragon spacecraft flew to the ISS in September with a team of two—NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov—rather than the usual four, to make room for the stranded astronauts.
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On Sunday, a relief team — Crew-10 — docked with the space station to make the way for Ms Williams and Mr Wilmore’s much-awaited homecoming, along with Mr Hague and Mr Gorbunov.
Ms Williams and Mr Wilmore’s stay surpassed the standard six-month ISS rotation but ranks only sixth among US records for single-mission duration. NASA astronaut Frank Rubio holds the record at 371 days in 2023.
Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov holds the world record, who spent 437 consecutive days aboard the Mir station.
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Politics Surrounding Sunita Williams’ Return
With Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore stuck in space, a political blame game erupted on Earth.
US President Donald Trump, who returned to power in January, and his close advisor, Elon Musk — who leads SpaceX — have repeatedly claimed that former president Joe Biden abandoned the astronauts and refused an earlier rescue plan.
“They shamefully forgot about the Astronauts, because they considered it to be a very embarrassing event for them,” President Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday.