With two US astronauts stuck aboard the International Space Station (ISS) for more than nine months, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has confirmed that they will return to Earth on Tuesday evening.
Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams will return home with another American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut on a SpaceX Crew Dragon craft that docked at the International Space Station early Sunday.
NASA said on Sunday evening that the astronauts’ scheduled ocean splashdown off the Florida coast had been pushed back to roughly 5:57 p.m. on Tuesday (21:57 GMT and 3:30 a.m., March 19, IST). It was originally scheduled for no earlier than Wednesday.
The duo has been on the ISS since June of last year, when the Boeing Starliner spacecraft they were testing on its maiden crewed flight had propulsion faults and was ruled unsafe to return them to Earth.
“The updated return target continues to allow the space station crew members time to complete handover duties while providing operational flexibility ahead of less favourable weather conditions expected for later in the week,” the European Space Agency reported.
NASA announced in a statement that it will give live coverage of SpaceX Crew-9’s return to Earth from the ISS, commencing with Dragon spacecraft hatch closure preparations at 10:45 p.m. EDT Monday, March 17 (about 8:30 a.m. on March 18 in India).
NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will also return on the Dragon capsule. The slated journey will mark the end of an ordeal for Wilmore and Williams that has seen them stuck for nine months after what was meant to have been a days-long roundtrip.
While the extended stay of Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams aboard the ISS was much longer than the typical six-month rotation for astronauts, it falls short of the US space record of 371 days set by NASA astronaut Frank Rubio in 2023, or the world record of 437 days held by Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov aboard the Mir space station.
The unexpected length of their absence from their families had sparked much interest, suspicion, and concern. Because of the unexpected prolongation, both astronauts required extra clothing and personal care supplies, as they had not packed enough for such a long journey.
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