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Stuck in space no
more, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams returned to
Earth on Tuesday, hitching a different ride home to close out a
saga that began with a bungled test flight more than nine months
ago.
New Delhi
Their SpaceX capsule parachuted into the Gulf of Mexico in
the early evening, just hours after departing the International
Space Station. Splashdown occurred off the coast of Tallahassee in
the Florida Panhandle, bringing their unplanned odyssey to an end.
It all started
with a flawed Boeing test flight last spring.
The two expected
to be gone just a week or so after launching on Boeing's new
Starliner crew capsule on June 5. So many problems cropped up on
the way to the space station that NASA eventually sent Starliner
back empty and transferred the test pilots to SpaceX, pushing their
homecoming into February. Then SpaceX capsule issues added another
month's delay.
Sunday's arrival of their relief crew meant Wilmore and
Indian-origin, 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.
Wilmore and
Williams ended up spending 286 days in space — 278 days longer than
anticipated when they launched. They circled Earth 4,576 times and
traveled 121 million miles (195 million kilometers) by the time of
splashdown...Prayers for their safe return also came from Wilmore's
Baptist church in Houston, where he serves as an elder.
After returning in the gulf — Trump in January signed an
executive order renaming the body of water Gulf of America —
Wilmore and Williams will have to wait until they're off the SpaceX
recovery ship and flown to Houston before reuniting with their
loved ones. The three NASA
astronauts will be checked out by flight surgeons as they adjust to
gravity, officials said, and allowed to go home after several days.
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