NASA’s Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore — who gained international attention as their planned short stay in space stretched into a nine-month, politically fraught mission — are finally heading home.
The astronauts climbed aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule alongside two teammates, NASA’s Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, and departed the International Space Station at 1:05 a.m. ET Tuesday before an expected splashdown return Tuesday afternoon.
Williams, Wilmore, Hague and Gorbunov are part of the Crew-9 mission, a routine staff rotation jointly operated by NASA and SpaceX. The Crew-9 capsule launched to the space station in September with Hague and Gorbunov riding alongside two empty seats reserved for Williams and Wilmore, who have been on the orbiting laboratory since last June, when their original ride — a Boeing Starliner spacecraft — malfunctioned.
Safely reaching Earth will conclude a trip that, for Williams and Wilmore, has garnered broad interest because of the unexpected nature of their extended stay in orbit and the dramatic turn of events that prevented them from returning home aboard the Boeing Starliner vehicle. (CNN)