NASA’s Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore — who gained international attention as their planned short stay in space stretched into a nine-month, politically fraught mission — are finally heading home.
The astronauts climbed aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule alongside two teammates, NASA’s Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, and departed the International Space Station at 1:05 a.m. ET Tuesday before an expected splashdown return Tuesday afternoon.
Williams, Wilmore, Hague and Gorbunov are part of the Crew-9 mission, a routine staff rotation jointly operated by NASA and SpaceX. The Crew-9 capsule launched to the space station in September with Hague and Gorbunov riding alongside two empty seats reserved for Williams and Wilmore, who have been on the orbiting laboratory since last June, when their original ride — a Boeing Starliner spacecraft — malfunctioned.
Safely reaching Earth will conclude a trip that, for Williams and Wilmore, has garnered broad interest because of the unexpected nature of their extended stay in orbit and the dramatic turn of events that prevented them from returning home aboard the Boeing Starliner vehicle.
But the length of the duo’s stay in space is not record-breaking. Williams and Wilmore’s extended mission is expected to conclude after 286 days, which is still significantly shorter than the world record of 437 days in orbit held by the late Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov.
Williams, Wilmore, Hague and Gorbunov are on track to spend Tuesday morning and afternoon in orbit in the roughly 13-foot-wide (4-meter-wide), gumdrop-shaped SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. Gradually descending, the capsule will carry the astronauts from the space station, which orbits about 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth, toward the thick inner layer of our planet’s atmosphere.
Around 5 p.m. ET, the Crew Dragon capsule is expected to fire its engines to begin the final phase of the journey: reentry. This leg of the journey is considered the most dangerous of any flight home from space. The jarring physics of hitting the atmosphere while traveling more than 22 times the speed of sound routinely heats the exterior of returning spacecraft to more than 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,926 degrees Celsius) and can trigger a communication blackout.
After plunging toward home, the Crew Dragon spacecraft will then deploy two sets of parachutes in quick succession to further slow its descent. If all goes to plan, the capsule will decelerate from orbital speeds of more than 17,000 miles per hour (27,359 kilometers per hour) to less than 20 miles per hour (32 kilometers per hour) as the vehicle hits the ocean.
Williams, Wilmore, Hague and Gorbunov are slated to splash down off the coast of Florida as soon as 5:57 p.m. ET Tuesday — though the exact time and location are subject to change as mission controllers keep tabs on weather and the progress of the crew’s return trip.
After the vehicle hits the ocean, a SpaceX rescue ship waiting nearby will haul the spacecraft out of the water, and Williams and Wilmore will exit Dragon and take their first breaths of earthly air in nine months.
Last summer, NASA decided flying the two astronauts home aboard their Boeing Starliner capsule would be too risky, and the space agency opted to fold Williams and Wilmore into the International Space Station’s regular crew rotation. That call is why the pair are flying home with Hague and Gorbunov on SpaceX’s Crew-9 capsule.
Medical teams will evaluate the crew’s health, as is routine after astronauts return from space, before deciding next steps. Ultimately, the NASA crew members will return to their home base at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Reported by CNN