Two NASA astronauts finally return home after spending more than nine months on the International Space Station (ISS) for what was a week -long mission.
The NASA SpaceX Crew 9 mission will move from the ISS on Tuesday around 1:05 a.m. The crew includes the astronauts of NASA Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who went to the ISS aboard the Boeing Starliner CST-100 spacecraft on June 5, 2024. The spaceship in difficulty was considered unfit to turn the pair on earth, forcing Williams and Wilmore to return to the ground on a spatial of the dragon crew space Initial return date.
The live cover of the closure of the Dragon hatch will start on Monday at 10:45 p.m. on NASA website And NASA +. A live flow from the Dragon non-Baisse procedure will start on Tuesday at 12:45 p.m., and the shine of the crew vehicle is expected around 5:57 p.m. HE. NASA will resume the cover live from the return of Dragon at 4:45 p.m., and a press conference will take place at 7:30 p.m..
The Starliner saga has drawn a lot of attention in recent months, with questions about whether the crew had been abandoned or not in space. Williams and Wilmore were assigned as the first crew to fly aboard the Boeing Starliner spacecraft. Things did not go well for the crew test flight, five of the propellants of the spacecraft failed on the way to the ISS, and Starliner came home empty.
NASA had to offer an elaborate plan to bring the crew to earth. On September 28, 2024, NASA launched its CREW-9 mission with two astronauts instead of four (the two being the astronaut of NASA Nick Hague and Roscosmos Cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov), moving at the ISS the next day. The two empty seats were reserved for Williams and Wilmore, who were to return alongside the crew-9 astronauts in February.
However, the plan was faced with trouble, as technical problems have delayed the launch of the NASA SpaceX CREW-10 mission, reporting the transfer of the crew. This meant that Crew-9, alongside Williams and Wilmore, could not leave the ISS as long as Crew-10 is not on the space station in April. NASA ended up changing the spacecraft SpaceX Crew, launching its CREW-10 mission on March 12 to bring the two Starliner astronauts around two weeks earlier.
The decision may have been launched by President Donald Trump’s ploy to use the fate of the two astronauts in his favor. Shortly after taking office, Trump said he was working on a rescue mission for the two astronauts. Trump announced that he had asked the founder and CEO of SpaceX, Elon Musk wrote on social truth.
Astronauts, however, were not abandoned in space, and they never needed a rescue mission. The organization of crew schedules in space can become complicated and costly, which is why the Starliner crew had to wait a little longer before being able to jump on a spaceship towards the earth. That said, we will be happy to see the two astronauts back home after an unexpected period in space.
