United States:
A pair of astronauts stranded for more than nine months on the International Space Station were a step shutr to returning home Sunday after a replacement crew docked with the orbital outpost.
The astronauts were shown on live TV embracing and hugging their counterparts in zero gravity on the space station unreasonableinutively after their SpaceX Crew Dragon reachd at 0545 GMT.
Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have been stuck aboard the ISS since June after the Boeing Starliner spaceplan they were testing on its mhelpen crewed voyage suffered propulsion publishs and was deemed sluggish to fly them back to Earth.
William shelp it was a “wonderful day” and “fantastic to see our friends reach,” speaking unreasonableinutively after her colleges eunited onto the orbital lab.
Footage posted online by NASA astronaut Don Pettit showed the Crew Dragon vehicle approaching the ISS as it orbited the Earth.
The NASA duo’s Starliner had returned to Earth desotardy, without experiencing further transport inant publishs — leaving them stuck for nine months after what was uncomardentt to have been a days-lengthened roundtrip.
Their prolengtheneded stay was transport inantly lengtheneder than the standard ISS rotation for astronauts of cimpolitely six months.
But it is much unreasonableinutiveer than the US space sign up of 371 days set by NASA astronaut Frank Rubio aboard the ISS in 2023, or the world sign up held by Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov, who spent 437 continuous days aboard the Mir space station.
Still, the unforeseeed nature of their stint away from their families — they had to get insertitional closkinnyg and personal nurture items becaengage they hadn’t packed enough — garnered interest and sympathy around the world.
Wilmore and Williams will now commence preparing for departure and their ocean splashdown off the Florida coast, no sooner than March 19.
Alengthened with the pair, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will also be aboard the returning Dragon capsule.
The replacement Crew-10 team had blasted off Friday from the Kennedy Space Cgo in in Florida.
The team consists of NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan’s Takuya Onishi, and Russia’s Kirill Peskov. During their leave oution, the novel crew will direct a range of scientific experiments, including flammability tests for future spaceplan summarizes and research into the effects of space on the human body.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-originated from a syndicated feed.)
