NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore will soon leave for Earth after spending over nine months on the International Space Station (ISS). The two astronauts became stranded following their arrival due to unexpected technical issues with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, which was originally meant to carry them back to Earth. After months of assessment and problem-solving, mission controllers at NASA finally gave the green light for their return.
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The two astronauts took part in their final photo op before entering the Dragon, the SpaceX spacecraft bringing them back home, in a video featured on NASA’s social media platforms.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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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, making it unfit to fly them back, and it returned uncrewed. NASA then reassigned them to the NASA-SpaceX Crew-9 mission. To accommodate the stranded astronauts, a Dragon spacecraft flew to the ISS in September last year with a team of two instead of the usual four.
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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 NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.Ms Williams and Mr Wilmore’s stay surpasses 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, while the world record remains with Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov, who spent 437 consecutive days aboard the Mir station.
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