What started as an eight-day mission on the International Space Station (ISS) became a nine-month wait for a return trip back to Earth’s surface.
Now astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams can finally feel the pull of gravity once again, having splashed down safely off the Gulf Coast of Florida Tuesday evening alongside fellow NASA crewmate Nick Hague and the Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.
Launched on 5 June 2024, the Boeing Crew Flight Test was intended to deliver Wilmore and Williams to the ISS in a demonstration of the transport capacity for the company’s promising new Starliner spaceship.
In what would be a major setback for Boeing’s commercial space venture, the ship’s engines glitched on approach to the space station, resulting in a review that concluded the vessel would return to Earth without passengers, with its crew to remain behind and await a ‘rescue’ mission.
Though NASA has never officially described the two astronauts as stranded, the pair’s mission extended from days into weeks into months as plans were made to bring them home.
Though they admitted to missing their friends and family, Williams and Wilmore claimed to have enjoyed their time on board the station, participating in the routines, keeping busy conducting more than 150 unique scientific experiments, and even undergoing spacewalks.
Early Tuesday morning, the crew climbed into a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule for a 17-hour trip home. Once in orbit, a quick firing of the spacecraft’s engines brought the craft into a final maneuver that directed it towards Florida’s Gulf Coast.
At 5:57 pm ET, the craft touched down, finally bringing to an end a work shift that will go down in space history.
