WASHINGTON: A pair of astronauts stranded in space for more than nine months were finally headed home Tuesday after their capsule undocked from the International Space Station.
The SpaceX craft carrying Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams detached from the orbital outpost at 0505 GMT, ending their prolonged mission that has captivated global attention. The NASA duo are joined onboard by American Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.
The crew are now settling in for the 17-hour journey back to Earth, and were given permission to change from their space suits into more comfortable clothes.
If all goes smoothly, the capsule will deploy its parachutes off the coast of Florida for an ocean splashdown around 2157 GMT Tuesday, when a recovery vessel will retrieve the crew. Wilmore and Williams flew to the orbital lab in June last year, on what was supposed to be a days-long roundtrip to test out Boeing’s Starliner on its first crewed flight.
But the spaceship developed propulsion problems and was deemed unfit to fly them back, instead returning empty. Ex-Navy pilots Wilmore and Williams, 62 and 59 respectively, were reassigned to the NASA-SpaceX Crew-9 mission, which saw a Dragon spacecraft fly to the ISS last September with a team of two, rather than the usual four, to make room for the “stranded” pair. Then, early Sunday, a relief team called Crew-10 docked with the station, their arrival met with broad smiles and hugs as they floated through the hatch.
Crew-10’s arrival cleared the way for Wilmore and Williams to depart, along with Hague and Gorbunov.
After big hugs with the crew remaining on the ISS, the quartet entered the capsule and closed its hatch on Tuesday.
“Colleagues and dear friends who remain on the station… we’ll be waiting for you. Crew-9 is going home”, Hague said. –Agencies
