Did not stick to space, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suuni Williams He returned to the land on Tuesday, taking a different walk at home to close a saga that started with a test flight grouped more than nine months ago.
Its Spacex capsule turned to the Gulf of Mexico early in the evening, a few hours after leaving the International Space Station. Splashdown occurred on the Costa de Tallahassee in Florida Panhandle, setting up his unplanned odyssey.
It all started with a defective Boeing test flight last spring.
The two were hoping to disappear only one week or so after launching the new Boeing crew capsule on June 5. So many problems took place on the way to the space station that NASA finally sent Starliner again and transferred the test pilots to Spacex, promoting his house in February. Then the Spacex capsule problems added the one month delay.
The arrival of Sunday of his crew of porrum meant that Wilmore and Williams could finally leave. NASA cut them a little early, given the weather forecast later this week. They checked with Nick Haven de Nasa and Alexander Gorbunov, who reached his 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 more than expected when they launched. The Earth traveled 4,576 times and traveled 195 million kilometers (195 million kilometers) at the time of Splashdown.
« In the name of Spacex, Welcome Home », Radioed Spacex Mission Control in California.
« What a walk, » Hango replied, the commander of the capsule.
The difficult situation of the two astronauts captured the world’s attention, giving a new meaning to the phrase « stuck to work » and turning « butch and suni » into home names. While other astronauts had registered the longest spaces around the decades, no one had to deal with such uncertainty or see the duration of their expanded mission.
Wilmore and Williams quickly went from guests to members of the full -fledged station crew, conducting experiments, setting equipment and even the space promenade together. With 62 more hours of space walkways, Williams set a record: the time spent the time in the race among female astronauts.
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Both had lived in the Orbiting Laboratory before and knew the ropes, and they were breaded at the station’s training before leaving. Williams became the rule of the station for three months in his stay and held the post until the beginning of this month.
Archive: NASA Suni Williams, left and Butch Wilmore Astronauts, are kept together for a photo of the Space Launch complex 41 Wednesday, June 5, 2024, in Cape Canaveral, FLA. (AP Photo/Chris O’Meara, File).
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Its mission took an unexpected turn in late January when President Donald Trump asked Spacex’s founder Elon Musk to accelerate the return of astronauts and blamed the delay of Biden’s administration. The new Spacex capsule of the spare crew was not yet ready to fly, so Spacex supplied it with a used, hurrying -things for at least a few weeks.
Even in the midst of the political storm, Wilmore and Williams continued to maintain a uniform keel in the public appearances of the orbit, without guilt and insisting that they supported NASA’s decisions from the beginning.
NASA contracted Spacex and Boeing after the shuttle program ended, in order to have two north -American companies to transport astronauts to Ai from the space station until it was abandoned in 2030 and went to a burning reignment. Then it will have been there for more than three decades; The plan is to replace it with private operation stations so that NASA can focus on Moon and Mars expeditions.
The two retired navy captains, Wilmore and Williams emphasized that they did not mind spending more time in space: a prolonged deployment reminiscent of their military days. But they acknowledged that it was difficult for their families.
Wilmore, 62, missed most of his minor daughter of high school; Her eldest daughter is in college. 59 -year -old Williams had to conform with the Internet calls to his mother and family members.
« We have not been worried that it has been in a good mood, » said Falguni Pandya, who is married to Williams’s cousin. « It has been healthy and we have been in contact with his right until they left. He was certainly ready to go home. »
The sentences for Williams and Wilmore were offered 21 Hindu temples in the United States during the months prior to their return, said the organizer Tejal Shah, President of the Hindu Council of America World Cup. Williams often spoke about his Indian and Slovenian heritage. Prayers on his safe return also came from Wilmore Baptist Church in Houston, where he is a great one.
After returning to golf – Trump in January he signed an executive order that was renamed the Gulf of Water Gulf of America – Willmore and Williams will have to wait until they were outside the Spacex recovery ship and fly to Houston before meeting with their loved ones. The three NASA astronauts will be reviewed by flight surgeons as they fit the gravity, said officials and allowed to return home after several days.
The AP Deepa Bharath journalist contributed to this report.
& Copy 2025 The Canadian Press
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