Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams are to be transported home with another American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon craft, which arrived at the ISS early Sunday. Williams and Wilmore have been stuck in the space since June after the Boeing Starliner spacecraft they were testing on its maiden crewed votage suffered propulsion issues and was deemed unfit to fly them back to Earth.
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“Nasa and SpaceX met on Sunday to assess weather and splashdown conditions off Florida’s coast for the return of the agency’s Crew-9 mission from the International Space Station. Mission managers are targeting an earlier Crew-9 return opportunity based on favorable conditions forecasted for the evening of Tuesday, March 18,” said the space agency in an official statement.
What is the timing of astronauts’ ocean splashdown?
NASA on Sunday announced the revised timing for the astronauts’ ocean splashdown near Florida’s coast to approximately 5.57 pm Tuesday (2157 GMT) preponed from the initial Wednesday schedule. “The updated return target continues to allow the space station crew members time to complete handover duties while providing operational flexibility ahead of less favorable weather conditions expected for later in the week,” Nasa said. The space agency also announced that they will show the return of the Crew-9 live and shared the updated schedule on its website.
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Sunita Williams’ return: When and where to watch the Earth splashdown
The SpaceX Dragon rocket will bring Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore back to earth on Tuesday evening, with the splashdown scheduled at 5:57 PM EST. The duo will be landing in Florida more than nine months after they were originally scheduled to return.
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NASA revealed that it will be live-streaming the return of Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore. The coverage will start from around 10:45 pm EST on Monday with hatch closure preparations. After the Boeing Starliner failed to bring back the stranded astronauts despite multiple attempts, US President Donald Trump tasked the Elon Musk-led SpaceX for the job.
While the two astronauts stayed in space for much longer than the originally planned eight days, they still didn’t smash the US record for the longest stay. That still belongs to Frank Rubio, who stayed aboard the station for 371 days in 2023. The world record was set by Russia’s Valeri Polyakov, who stayed aboard the Mir Space Station for a staggering 437 days in 1994-95.
On Friday, SpaceX and NASA launched a mission to bring back US astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore from the ISS, where they have been stranded for nine months. The lift-off took place at 7:03 ET on Friday, with a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon spacecraft on the Crew-10 mission.
