Sunita Williams live updates: NASA astronauts return to Earth, health challenges begin now
Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore returned to Earth after spending over nine months at the International Space Station (ISS) due to unexpected delays. Their spacecraft, SpaceX’s Dragon Freedom capsule, successfully splashed down off the Florida coast near Tallahassee, at 5.57 pm ET on Tuesday (3:27am IST, Wednesday).
‘Butch and Suni’ were accompanied by astronauts Nick Hague and Aleksandr Grebyonkin who reached the ISS in December as part of a rescue mission planned by NASA and SpaceX.
“On behalf of SpaceX, welcome home,” radioed SpaceX Mission Control in California.
An hour after their 17-hour-long journey, the astronauts were out of their scorched capsule, waving and smiling at the cameras while being hustled away in reclining stretchers for routine medical checks.
Political undertones of the successful rescue were hard to miss as The White House claimed that the rescue mission was due to President Trump’s efforts. “PROMISE MADE, PROMISE KEPT: President Trump pledged to rescue the astronauts stranded in space for nine months. Today, they safely splashed down in the Gulf of America, thanks to @ElonMusk, @SpaceX, and @NASA!” it wrote on X.
Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore travelled to the ISS in June last year for a scheduled eight-day mission. They were forced to stay as the Boeing Starliner capsule developed issues with its propulsion system. The duo was the first crew to fly Boeing’s Starliner in a test flight. The faulty capsule returned to Earth last September.
Sunita Williams | Key points
Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore spent 286 days on the International Space Station, where they conducted over 4500 orbits and travelled more than 121 million statute miles
The crew will undergo NASA’s 45-day post-mission rehabilitation program is designed to help astronauts recover from the physical effects of spaceflight.
‘Butch and Suni’ ended up spending 286 days in space — 278 days longer than anticipated when they launched. They circled Earth 4,576 times and travelled 121 million miles (195 million kilometres) by the time of splashdown.
Sunita Williams, capping her third spaceflight, will have tallied 608 cumulative days in space, the second most for any US astronaut after Peggy Whitson’s 675 days. Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko set the world record last year at 878 cumulative days.
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