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After nine months in space, Nasa astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have finally arrived back on Earth. Their SpaceX capsule made a fast and fiery re-entry through the Earth’s atmosphere, before four parachutes opened to take them to a gentle splashdown off the coast of Florida. A pod of dolphins circled the craft.
The crew’s doing great, Steve Stich, manager, Nasa’s Commercial Crew Program, said at a news conference. It brings to an end a mission that was supposed to last for just eight days. It was dramatically extended after the spacecraft Butch and Suni had used to travel to the International Space Station suffered technical problems.
Thanking the astronauts for their resilience and flexibility, he said SpaceX had been a “great partner.” The journey home took 17 hours. The astronauts were helped on to a stretcher, which is standard practice after spending so long in the weightless environment. They will be checked over by a medical team, and then reunited with their families.
The big thing will be seeing friends and family and the people they were expecting to spend Christmas with, said Helen Sharman, Britain’s first astronaut. All of those family celebrations, the birthdays and the other events that they thought they were going to be part of – now, suddenly they can perhaps catch up on a bit of lost time.
The saga of Butch and Suni began in June 2024. They were taking part in the first crewed test flight of the Starliner spacecraft, developed by aerospace company Boeing. But the capsule suffered several technical problems during its journey to the space station, and it was deemed too risky to take the astronauts home. Starliner returned safely to Earth empty in early September, but it meant the pair needed a new ride for their return.
So Nasa opted for the next scheduled flight: a SpaceX capsule that arrived at the ISS in late September. It flew with two astronauts instead of four, leaving two seats spare for Butch and Suni’s return. The only catch was this had a planned six-month mission, extending the astronauts’ stay until now.
They carried out an array of experiments on board the orbiting lab and conducted spacewalks, with Suni breaking the record for the woman who spent the most hours outside of the space station. And at Christmas, the team dressed in Santa hats and reindeer antlers – sending a festive message for a Christmas that they had originally planned to spend at home. And despite the astronauts being described as “stranded” they never really were.
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