NASA astronauts return home after 9 months in space

NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore have returned to earth safely after their Crew 9 Dragon Spacecraft splashdown safely off the coast of Florida.

SURYA S PILLAI | SNS  |  New Delhi | March 19, 2025 :  NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore have returned to earth safely after their Crew 9 Dragon Spacecraft splashdown safely off the coast of Florida.

The astronaut pair returned to earth after spending over nine months at the International Space Station (ISS) due to unexpected delays. Their spacecraft successfully splashed down off the Florida coast near Tallahassee, at 5.57 pm ET on Tuesday (3:27am IST, Wednesday).

” ‘Butch and Suni’ were accompanied by astronauts Nick Hague and Aleksandr Grebyonkin who reached the ISS in December as part of a rescue mission planned by NASA and SpaceX. On behalf of SpaceX, welcome home,” radioed SpaceX Mission Control in California.

An hour after their 17-hour-long journey, the astronauts were out of their scorched capsule, waving and smiling at the cameras while being hustled away in reclining stretchers for routine medical checks.

Williams and Wilmore travelled to the ISS in June last year for a scheduled eight-day mission. They were forced to stay as the Boeing Starliner capsule developed issues with its propulsion system. The duo was the first crew to fly Boeing’s Starliner in a test flight. The faulty capsule returned to earth last September.

According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the duo spent 286 days — 278 days longer than anticipated — on the International Space Station, where they conducted over 4,500 orbits and travelled more than 121 million statute miles.

“The crew will undergo NASA’s 45-day post-mission rehabilitation program which is designed to help the astronauts recover from the physical effects of spaceflight,” it said in a statement.

NASA also stated that during their rehabilitation period, the health condition of the astronauts will be closely tracked to make sure there is no vision impairment, muscle loss, balance issue, and bone density loss.

Williams, capping her third spaceflight, will have tallied 608 cumulative days in space, the second most for any US astronaut after Peggy Whitson’s 675 days. Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko set the world record last year at 878 cumulative days.

Even though both the NASA astronauts were stuck in space for nine months, the administration decided not to rush the mission but rather reassign the pair to SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission, which arrived at the ISS last September. Crew-9’s mission was reduced from four astronauts to two to make room for Williams and Wilmore.

On Sunday morning, Crew-9 bid a heartfelt farewell to their ISS colleagues after the arrival of their replacements, Crew-10.

Meanwhile, political undertones of the successful rescue were hard to miss as The White House claimed that the rescue mission was due to President Trump’s efforts.

“PROMISE MADE, PROMISE KEPT: President Trump pledged to rescue the astronauts stranded in space for nine months. Today, they safely splashed down in the Gulf of America, thanks to @ElonMusk, @SpaceX, and @NASA!” it wrote on X.