Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, with astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, are preparing to return to the Earth after a nine-month-long overstay at the International Space Station (ISS). Their return to Earth is part of a contingency plan devised by NASA with technical assistance from the world’s richest man, Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX.
Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore spent 286 days on the International Space Station, where they conducted over 4500 orbits and traveled more than 121 million statute miles, NASA said in its commentary.
The spacecraft, Elon Musk-led SpaceX’s Dragon, will splash down off the coast of the American state of Florida around 3:27 am IST Wednesday.
As NASA went live, Nick Hague, Suni Williams, Butch Wilmore, and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov were seen packing up and closing the hatches as Crew9 prepares to depart from the Space Station.
“It’s been a privilege to call the Space Station home, to play my part in its 25-year legacy of doing research for humanity, and to work with colleagues, now friends, from around the globe. My spaceflight career, like most, is full of the unexpected,” said Nick Hague.
The two astronauts 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. However, the spaceship developed propulsion problems and was deemed unfit to fly them back, so it returned empty.
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