Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sununi Williams return to Earth in a crew Dragon capsule before they are planned in a standing picture of video off the coast of Florida off the Florida coast on March 18, 2025.
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The two US Boeing The Starliner capsule returned without them.
The NASA -Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sununi Williams -like the Nasa -Astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos Cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov -are sprayed down to NASA at 5:57 a.m.
See the return trip and Splashdown here live here.
Wilmore and Williams left the earth on a test flight in June, which was originally supposed to take about nine days.
However, their stay was extended after engines on Boeing's Starliner capsule “Calypso” failed during the dock and concerns about the ship's ability to carry them home were expressed. The NASA finally sent the capsule back empty after being docked at the space station for about three months and said that she wanted to “understand the basic causes of the problems of the spacecraft”.
NASA also announced that Wilmore and Williams, both experienced astronauts and retired Navy test pilots, would return to a SpaceX Dragon spaceship instead. The agency has adapted its rotation of astronauts as a result and returned to Earth's mission from the SpaceX 'Mission of SpaceX' Crew-9 to make room for Wilmore and Williams.
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, two experienced NASA astronauts, who are at the international space station for nine months, wave in the hatch of a Space -Crew kite capsule before they close the hatch to exclude their return to March 17, 2025 in this statue.
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This capsule with the two people in crew-9 arrived in the ISS in September. The crews rotate in the ISS, which means that each group works of astronauts until the next one arrives at the space station when a ceremonial “handover” occurs.
NASA had originally planned for the mission of SpaceX 'Crew-10, which had to arrive in February before the crew 9 members were able to come back onto the market, but it was delayed by about a month.
The rocket with the four new crew members started on Friday evening and its capsule laid out at the space station about 29 hours later.
The Starliner Crew flight test should check a final box for Boeing and deliver important capital for NASA. The agency hoped to realize its dream of two competing companies – Boeing and Elon Musk's SpaceX – changing missions to the ISS.
Instead, it is unclear which future space plans are from Boeing future occupation plans. The company has lost more than 2 billion US dollars in its Starliner spaceship.
Wilmore and Williams' journey started to politics when President Donald Trump took office. Trump and Musk, who has become a close consultant of the president, asked a faster start of Crew-10 and said without evidence that the two astronauts were “stranded” on the space station and that the bidding government kept them up there for political reasons. NASA had delayed the start of the crew-10 in December to enable more time to process a new kite capsule, but chose a reusable capsule to shorten the waiting time.
A SpaceX crew kite capsule with Butch Wilmore and Sununi Williams, two veterans -Masa -Stronauts, which are nine months at the international space station, and Roscosmos Cosmonauut Aleksandr Gorbunov and Nasa -Astronaut -Nick -Nick Hague Nick Hague, maneuver after the interpretation of ISS -IDOO -Video -video -Video -Video -Video.
NASA | About Reuters
NASA's plans to return the two astronauts have remained consistent since the agency was announced in August.
During their longer stay, Wilmore and Williams became part of a normal rotation, with scientific experiments and routine maintenance, like any other astronaut, being carried out in the rotation at the ISS. Williams also carried out a space.
Williams repeatedly said that the couple does not feel “abandoned” at the ISS, but she was looking forward to returning home to see her family and two dogs.
“It was a roller coaster for her, probably a little more than for us,” she told reporters at the beginning of this month.
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