Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore returned to earth after a nine -month stay at the international space station – a trip that lasted much longer than expected leaks and propulsion problems On the Boeing Starliner spacecraft, they would get there.
Williams and Wilmore splashed the Gulf of Mexico into a space dragon capsule at 5:57 p.m. Tuesday, after a return trip from 5 p.m. to the ISS.
Their return marks the end of one of the foreign chapters in recent history of space flights, thanks to the problems that Starliner de Boeing encountered and the way in which the CEO of SpaceX, Elon Musk, politicized the return of astronauts.
Williams and Wilmore initially launched the International Space Station (ISS) in June 2024 as part of a mission that was crucial for the attempted Boeing to compete with SpaceX. The aviation giant won a contract alongside SpaceX in 2014 to send astronauts to the ISS for NASA by ultimately holding them even more in the solar system.
SpaceX has executed its First crew flight With its crew dragon spacecraft in 2020 – during the first days of the cocoded pandemic. The Starliner project of Boeing, on the other hand, was driven by cost exceedances and delays.
The flight in June 2024 was supposed to help Boeing watch all this. The goal was to send Williams and Wilmore at the ISS, then bring them home after a short stay. But Starliner knew problems even before they stop with the ISS. Once they finally got on board, NASA and Boeing spent a few weeks before deciding to bring Starliner back without astronauts.
NASA quickly started working with SpaceX on a plan to bring back Willams and Wilmore. After a few round trips, they decided to wait until early 2025 to bring the duo back to the house so that the ISS was not short.
In recent months, however, Musk has said (without providing proof) that he has proposed to bring astronauts back to house earlier – and that former president Joe Biden refused the offer because it would help his political rival Donald Trump.
The former administrator and assistant administrator of NASA under Biden a both said The space agency was not aware of any offer. Cnn reported Tuesday These senior managers of the White House also claim that they did not know any offer.
Watch the team return to earth::
This story has been updated to include a video of the return astronauts.
