Sunita Williams To Finally Return To Earth After 

After spending over nine months on the International Space Station, astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore will finally return to Earth early Tuesday, concluding an extended mission that has captured worldwide interest.

Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams embarked on a days-long roundtrip to the orbital lab in June last year to test Boeing’s Starliner on its first crewed flight.

But the propulsion problems in the spaceship rendered it unfit to fly them back, so it returned empty without encountering more major issues.

NASA reassigned ex-Navy pilots Wilmore and Williams, 62 and 59 respectively, to the NASA-SpaceX Crew-9 mission. In this mission, a Dragon spacecraft flew to the ISS last September with a team of two, rather than the usual four, to accommodate the “stranded” pair.

Then, early Sunday, a relief team called Crew-10 docked with the station, their arrival met with broad smiles and hugs as they floated through the hatch.

Crew-10’s arrival clears the way for Wilmore and Williams to depart, along with American Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.

After big hugs with the crew remaining on the ISS, the quartet entered the capsule and closed its hatch at 11:05 pm (0305 GMT Tuesday).

After completing a series of final checks, the crew will undock the craft at 1:05 am (0505 GMT).

If all goes smoothly, the Dragon craft will deploy its parachutes off the coast of Florida for an ocean splashdown, where a recovery vessel will retrieve the crew.

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Sunita Williams’ Extended Mission: Challenges and Resilience

Wilmore and Williams’ stay surpasses the standard six-month ISS rotation but ranks only sixth among US records for single-mission duration.

Frank Rubio holds the top spot at 371 days in 2023, while the world record remains with Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov, who spent 437 consecutive days aboard the Mir station.

That makes it “par for the course” in terms of health risks, according to Rihana Bokhari of the Center for Space Medicine at Baylor College.

Experts understand and manage challenges such as muscle and bone loss, fluid shifts, and readjusting to gravity well.

“Folks like Suni Williams are actually known for their interest in exercise, and so I believe she exercises beyond what is even her normal prescription,” Bokhari told AFP.

Still, the unexpected nature of their extended stay — away from their families and initially without enough packed supplies — has drawn public interest and sympathy.

“If you found out you went to work today and were going to be stuck in your office for the next nine months, you might have a panic attack,” Joseph Keebler, a psychologist at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, told AFP.

“These individuals have shown unbelievable resilience.”

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