Suni Williams I Butch Wilmore, American astronauts settled for nine months at an international space station, finally returned home on Tuesday, March 18. They returned to Earth with two members of the SpaceX Crew-9-Nenick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksander Gorbunov from Roscosmos-ABOARD Spacex Freedon Freedom Freedom.
Four crew successfully broke up off the coast of Florida at 17:57 edt. The bands on board Spacex Recovery Craft got into Dragon Freedom and helped the crew. The astronauts were then transported to the Johnson Space Center in Houston in NASA to connect with families again.
Sunita Lyn “Suni” Williams (59 years aged) and Barry Eugene “Butch” Wilmore, 62, released on June 5, 2024, on the mission of testing Starliner, a Boeing spacecraft designed for the transport of the crew to the ISS ISS and other low soil orbit. Astronauts did not plan to spend more than two weeks in space, but technical problems with Starliner thwarted this plan.
When he approached the space station, some of Starliner’s propellers stopped working. Although Boeing’s spacecraft was managed to do in the ISS, NASA preferred not to take any risk back and decided to send Starliner back to the ground without a crew on board. The spacecraft landed safely in September.
While the longer stay of Williams and Willime in space was unplanned, they trained to potentially have to stay on ISS for many months. Both also have extensive experience in space expeditions, including previous stays in ISS.
For astronauts to return home, NASA decided to send only two astronauts instead of four on the next SpaceX mission. Williams and Wilmore returned to earth in two free places in the SpaceX vehicle. After some delays, this mission-9, with Haga and Gorbunov on board-burden on September 28, 2024, associated with ISS.
But this did not mean the end of Williams and Wilmore’s stay at the space station. It was still necessary to wait for the next mission to reach the ISS to leave the space station with the appropriate number of staff to operate it. Even after the arrival of the crew-9 Williams and Wilmore, they had to wait for the crew-10 to arrive until March 14-as to return to the ground.
While the orphan astronauts were prepared for these inconveniences, their condition became a political problem between the administrations of American presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Elon Musk, the owner of SpaceX and the leading figure in the second Trump administration, accused Biden administration of abandoning astronauts to the ISS. Shortly after inauguration of President Trump Musk asked To return orphaned astronauts as soon as possible.
“The promise made, the promise stopped: President Trump undertook to save astronauts embedded in space for nine months. Today they safely splashed in the bay of America, thanks to the bay of America, thanks
@Elonmusk, @spacex and @nasa! “Official White House Account Posted to X On Tuesday after Zamkiek.
“We are glad that we have Suni, Butch, Nick and Aleksandr home after their months of mission conducting significant science, technological demonstrations and maintenance on board an international space station,” said Janet Petro -Dminator NASA, Janet Petro in a statement. “According to President Trump NASA and Spacex, they carefully worked to draw a schedule a month earlier. This international crew and our teams on Earth adopted the challenge of the administration of the updated Trump and a slightly unique mission plan to bring our crew to the house.”
According to Nasa Williams and Wilmore, they traveled 195 million kilometers during their mission, spent 286 days in space and finished 4576 orbits around the earth.
This story originally appeared Wired in Spanish and was translated from Spanish.