Florida: NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore, who were stranded at the International Space Station (ISS) for the past nine months, have finally begun their journey to Earth. The undocking of the Crew-10 Mission's Dragon spacecraft was finally completed on Tuesday.
The Indian-origin astronaut and Wilmore along with another American astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will touch down the coast of Florida at 3:27 am (IST) on March 19. Their entire journey will be around 17 hours.
Dragon Spacecraft Begins Its Journey Towards Earth:
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Space's Crew-1o Mission was laucnhed earlier this month to bring back the standed astronauts. Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon spacecraft on the Crew-10 mission lifted off at 7:03 ET on March 10 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Four astronauts boarded the Dragon spacecraft. These four astronauts are - NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA ) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov. Notably, The Dragon spacecraft reached the ISS on Sunday.
Williams and Wilmore will return to Earth after spending almost nine months on ISS. On Sunday, NASA, in a statement, had said that it had moved forward the astronauts' anticipated ocean splashdown off the Florida coast to nearly 5:57 p.m. on Tuesday (21:57 GMT).
The NASA astronauts reached the ISS in June last year after the Boeing Starliner spacecraft they were testing on its maiden crewed voyage suffered propulsion issues and was deemed unfit to fly them back to Earth.
NASA said in a statement that it will provide live coverage of the agency's SpaceX Crew-9 return to Earth from the ISS.
