Astronauts stuck in space return safely

Weeklong mission ends up in 9-month odyssey as spacecraft lands on Earth

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have returned to Earth in one of Elon Musk's SpaceX capsules, splashing down off Florida nine months after what originally was to be a weeklong stay on the International Space Station.

Wilmore and Williams, strapped inside their Crew Dragon spacecraft along with two other astronauts, undocked from the ISS early on Tuesday to embark on a 17-hour trip to Earth, after bidding farewell to the station's seven other astronauts.

The four-person crew, formally part of NASA's Crew-9 astronaut-rotation mission, reentered Earth's atmosphere around 5:45 pm local time. Using Earth's atmosphere and two sets of parachutes, the craft slowed its orbital speed of roughly 27,000 km/h to 27 km/h at splashdown off Tallahassee in the Gulf of Mexico.

Dolphins circled the capsule as divers readied it for hoisting onto the recovery ship.

Within an hour, the astronauts were out of their capsule, waving and smiling at the cameras while being taken away in stretchers for routine medical checks.

Wilmore, 62, and Williams, 59, ended up spending 286 days in space — 278 days longer than anticipated when they launched. They circled Earth 4,576 times and traveled 195 million kilometers by the time of splashdown.

"On behalf of SpaceX, welcome home," radioed SpaceX Mission Control in California.

"What a ride," NASA astronaut Nick Hague, the Crew-9 mission commander inside the Dragon capsule, told mission control moments after splashing down. "I see a capsule full of grins, ear to ear."

The two veteran NASA astronauts, who are both retired US Navy test pilots, had launched into space as Boeing Starliner's first crew in June for what was expected to be an eight-day test mission.

But issues with Starliner's propulsion system led to continuous delays in their return home when NASA decided to have them take a SpaceX craft back this year as part of the agency's crew-rotation schedule.

The replacement crew's brand-new SpaceX capsule still was not ready to fly, so SpaceX replaced it with a used one, moving things along by at least a few weeks.

The mission took an unexpected turn in late January when President Donald Trump asked SpaceX founder Elon Musk to speed up the astronauts' return and blamed the delay on the Joe Biden administration.

"Congratulations to the@SpaceX and @NASA teams for another safe astronaut return! Thank you to @POTUS for prioritizing this mission!" Musk wrote on X on Tuesday.

Blame game

Musk and Trump have pushed the theory that Williams and Wilmore were stuck for political reasons, but former astronauts and NASA officials deny that claim, National Public Radio reported.

Trump appears to have first made the claim that the astronauts were stranded for political reasons on Jan 28.

"Biden was embarrassed by what happened, and he said 'Leave them up there,'" Trump said at the Oval Office on March 6. "Elon is right now preparing a ship to go up and get them."

Former astronauts and NASA officials have denied any political motives behind the extended stay.

"They had a SpaceX Dragon there as an emergency lifeboat, to bring them back at any time they needed to," said former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly.

NASA acted on Trump's demand by moving Crew-9's replacement mission up sooner, the agency's ISS chief Joel Montalbano said on Tuesday. The agency had swapped a delayed SpaceX capsule for one that would be ready sooner and speed through its methodical safety review process to heed Trump's call, Reuters reported.

NASA officials have said the two astronauts had to remain on the ISS to maintain adequate staffing levels and it did not have the budget or the operational need to send a dedicated rescue spacecraft. Crew Dragon flights cost between $100 million and $150 million.

Agencies contributed to this story.

hengweili@chinadailyusa.com