Ahmedabad (Gujarat), March 16: After spending over nine months aboard the International Space Station (ISS), NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams are now preparing for their return to Earth.
Nilesh M Desai, Director of the Space Applications Centre (SAC), provided insight into the process of their return, explaining, “The crew mission is sent every 6 months under NASA’s ISS program. So, the 10th crew mission has reached there now… They will return to Earth after over 9 months.”
Desai also clarified the distinction between crew and cargo missions. “NASA keeps sending cargo missions regularly, but it has no provision for bringing astronauts back. The provision is possible only in the case of a crew mission,” he stated.
On Friday, SpaceX and NASA launched a mission to bring back astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore from the ISS. The mission, which took off at 7:03 ET, saw a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon spacecraft on the Crew-10 mission, tasked with bringing the astronauts home after their long stay in space.
Earlier, SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, carrying NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov, successfully docked with the ISS. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk confirmed the docking in a post on X, saying, “SpaceX Dragon docks with Space Station.”
NASA also issued a statement confirming the arrival of these astronauts, noting, “NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, JAXA astronaut Takuya Onishi, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov arrived at the International Space Station on Sunday, as the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docked with the orbiting complex at 12:04 a.m. EDT, while the station was roughly 260 statute miles over the Atlantic Ocean.”
Following this, the Crew-10 astronauts will join the Expedition 72 crew aboard the ISS, which includes NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Don Petitt, Sunita Williams, and Butch Wilmore, along with Roscosmos cosmonauts Aleksandr Gorbunov, Alexey Ovchinin, and Ivan Vagner. The total crew aboard the space station will rise to 11 before Crew-9 members Hague, Williams, Wilmore, and Gorbunov return to Earth after the crew handover period.