Splashdown Success!
Miami, US, Mar 18 (EFE). –
Astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams, who spent nine months in the International Space Station, returned to Earth in a SpaceX capsule that successfully splashed down off the coast of Florida on Tuesday.
Willmore and Willians were scheduled to spend about a week at the ISS but had to stay for more than nine months due to problems with multiple engines and helium leaks in the Boeing spacecraft that carried them in June 2024.
The Dragon Freedom crew capsule in which they returned successfully made a soft splashdown with the help of four parachutes off the coast of Tallahassee, Florida, at about 5:57 pm.
The capsule deployed its parachutes smoothly and hit the water precisely in the designated area, where a SpaceX and NASA recovery team was waiting to assist the crew members.
Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov flew in September with two empty seats for Wilmore and Williams’ return.
The four crew members splashed down in the Florida Sea about 17 hours after descending from the ISS.
Williams and Wilmore’s week-long plan stretched into a 285 days-stay, but still far from the ISS record held by Salvadoran-born American Frank Rubio, who spent 371 days between 2022 and 2023 due to a failure of the Russian Soyuz MS-22 capsule.
Rubio recovered from the extended stay in microgravity, and NASA has said it expects Williams and Wilmore to do the same, thanks to their training.
Williams and Wilmore, who performed scientific activities during the extended mission, may experience bone and muscle loss, impaired vision, and changes in the cardiovascular system.
However, NASA has implemented exercise and medical monitoring protocols to mitigate these effects.
The nine-month delay posed a problem for scientists and managers at NASA, Boeing, and SpaceX, who always denied that the astronauts were “stranded.”
Nor did they talk about it as a “rescue” mission, considering that it was part of the tests by several companies as part of NASA’s commercial program.
Boeing’s Starliner test spacecraft, which the company hoped to use to earn certification points and compete with SpaceX, encountered several problems upon arrival at the orbital laboratory.
Starliner arrived at the ISS in early June 2024 with both NASA astronauts aboard and was returned to Earth empty as a precaution.
The overall space record is held by Russia’s Valeri Polyakov, with 437 days (1994-1995) on the now-dismantled Soviet Mir station. EFE
ims/mcd
