After nine months on board the International Space Station, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have touched down back on Earth.
It was June 5, 2024 when the two astronauts waved goodbye to their loved ones down on Earth and blasted off for what they expected at the time to be an eight-day mission on the ISS, but Wilmore and Williams soon learned they wouldn’t be returning home quite so soon.
The delay stemmed from the fact the Boeing vessel intended to bring them home was determined not to be safe enough to carry them, forcing the astronauts to watch as it instead returned home without them.
Recalling that moment in a September interview, Williams said: “We were watching our spaceship fly away.”
NASA has explained that the reason it couldn’t bring the astronauts home any sooner was simply due to a lack of budget, but now, with the help of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, their time among the stars has come to an end.
The moment the parachutes deployed for the splash landing (NASA)
The SpaceX Dragon Crew splashed down just off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida, to a gorgeous blue sky after a 17-hour descent from space.
Their return means the astronauts will finally be reunited with their loved ones, with Williams having admitted in September that she missed her family and her two dogs.
However, the astronaut did also insist at the time that the ISS was her ‘happy place’.
Wilmore and Williams expected to be in space for eight days (YouTube/NASA Video)
Williams also said that being in space made her think more about what was going on on the planet below, saying: “It opens up the door to making you think a bit differently. It’s the one planet we have and we should be taking care of it.
“There are so many people on Earth sending us messages it makes you feel right at home with everybody.”
Williams and Wilmore’s long-awaited return comes after a previous plan to head out and bring the astronauts home on March 16 had to be pushed back due to a hydraulic ground issue.
The splash landing was a success (NASA)
The four astronauts set to travel to the ISS to take the places of Wilmore and Williams were strapped into the capsule and ready to go, but SpaceX decided to cancel the mission with less than an hour to go before the intended blastoff.
Now, crews will recover the capsule from the waters while the astronauts will make their last leg of the journey towards Houston, the hub of NASA’s spaceflight operations.
How did the astronauts end up in space for nine months?
Wilmore and Williams set off on what they thought was going to be a simple eight-day round mission to the International Space Station (ISS). They left without a hiccup on June 5, 2024.
The pair were deployed to evaluate the Boeing Starliner Calypso’s docking and operational capabilities on its first-ever crewed flight.
Yet as the Starliner approached the ISS, it experienced helium leaks and its thrusters failed, prompting to NASA to deem it too dangerous for Williams and Wilmore to return to Earth.
As a result, they’ve spent almost 300 days orbiting their home planet.
Why was there a delay with the rescue plan?
It’s clearly not a simple task going to collect stranded, orbiting astronauts.
First of all, NASA doesn’t like to leave the ISS unoccupied – with various crews continuously living at the station for the past 25 years.
So when Williams and Wilmore’s spacecraft was deemed too risky to fly home, the pair formed Crew-9 in the regular crew rotation of the ISS, and have been carrying out science experiments and general maintenance ever since.
What this meant is that they’ve had to wait for another crew to arrive to replace them.
Crew-9 Dragon successfully landed and docked at the ISS in September, with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunobv aboard, in preperation to bring them home.
In August, NASA outlined plans to bring Wilmore and Williams back on a return mission in February in the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, but that hinged on Crew-10 taking over.
However, Crew-10 ran into trouble due to defective batteries, which delayed the schedule.
Then, as of Friday, four replacements – Crew-10 commander Anne McClain, pilot Nichole Ayers, cosmonaut Kirill Peskov and Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi – successfully landed, meaning the Crew-9 four can finally come home.