Two Nasa astronauts who have been stuck in space for nine months have finally returned to Earth.
Nasa’s Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore – whose brief stay in space stretched into a nine-month mission – are finally home.
The astronauts, accompanied by Nasa’s Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, splashed down off the coast of Tallahassee in the Florida Panhandle on Tuesday evening as their families watched on.
A SpaceX rescue ship waiting nearby hauled the spacecraft out of the water, as dolphins swam around the capsule.
“On behalf of SpaceX, welcome home,” radioed SpaceX Mission Control in California.
“What a ride,” replied Hague, the capsule’s commander.
Within an hour, the astronauts were out of their capsule, waving and smiling at the cameras while being hustled away in reclining stretchers for routine medical checks
Medical teams are set to evaluate the crew’s health, as is routine after astronauts return from space, before deciding next steps.
Williams and Wilmore arrived at the ISS on June 6 last year, intending to stay long enough to evaluate Starliner’s docking and operational capabilities during its first crewed flight and return home no more than ten days later.
But a series of technical issues and safety fears led Nasa and Boeing to send the capsule back to Earth empty in September, and extend the pair’s stay to 286 days.
The length of the duo’s stay in space is not record-breaking. It is still significantly shorter than the world record of 437 days in orbit held by the late Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov.
Sunday’s arrival of their relief crew meant Wilmore and Williams could finally leave. Nasa cut them loose a little early, given the iffy weather forecast later this week.
They checked out with Nasa’s Nick Hague and Russia’s Alexander Gorbunov, who arrived in their own SpaceX capsule last fall with two empty seats reserved for the Starliner duo.
“We’ll miss you, but have a great journey home,” Nasa’s Anne McClain called out from the space station as the capsule pulled away 260 miles (418 kilometres) above the Pacific.
Their plight captured the world’s attention, giving new meaning to the phrase “stuck at work.”
Wilmore and Williams quickly transitioned from guests to full-fledged station crew members, conducting experiments, fixing equipment and even spacewalking together.
With 62 hours over nine spacewalks, Williams set a record: the most time spent spacewalking over a career among female astronauts.
Both had lived on the orbiting lab before and knew the ropes, and brushed up on their station training before rocketing away. Williams became the station’s commander three months into their stay and held the post until earlier this month.
Their mission took an unexpected twist in late January when President Donald Trump asked SpaceX founder Elon Musk to accelerate the astronauts’ return and blamed the delay on the Biden administration.
The replacement crew’s brand new SpaceX capsule still wasn’t ready to fly, so SpaceX subbed it with a used one, hurrying things along by at least a few weeks.
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