Photo caption: Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore. Photo credit: NASA
By Emeka Ugwuanyi with Agency report
The eight days that turned into a 10-month stay on the international space station is about to come to an end. Stranded ISS astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore will be splashing down later today, March 18, at around 5:55 p.m. ET.
Williams and Wilmore originally docked with the ISS last Summer, where they were expected to spend a few days aboard the station after proving the safety and viability of the Boeing Starliner capsule they arrived on.
Unfortunately, the capsule proved unsafe for the return journey, so Wilmore and Williams were effectively trapped on the ISS until another capsule could be sent up. But when the Crew 9 capsule arrived, it couldn’t immediately take them home, as that would leave the station either without an escape vehicle, or enough crew to safely maintain the US branch of the station.
After much political mud-slinging from the new administration and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, the commercial venture finally sent a refurbished Dragon capsule to the station so that the astronauts could return home on the already-docked Crew-9 capsule.
It undocked from the ISS with the Crew-9 team aboard, as well as Williams and Wilmore, and is now scheduled to splash down in the Gulf of Mexico later today.
The deorbit burn for the “Freedom” Dragon capsule is set to begin at 5:11 p.m. ET, with the splashdown expected to take place some 45 minutes later, just before 6 p.m. A precise location for the landing will be confirmed closer to the time, according to Space.com.
==== Space.com. ====
