They set out for eight days at the space station. The journey lasted nine months.
On Tuesday, NASA astronauts who have been in orbit since June, Sony Williams and Boot Wilmor, in quiet water, and Azur water off the coast of Florida Bastandel, concluded the epic that captured the country since last summer.
Mrs. Williams and Mr. Wilmor launched in June for the International Space Station on the Starliner test, a Boeing spacecraft that was scheduled to provide NASA with another option, outside Spacex, to transfer astronauts to and from orbit. But Starliner has faced problems with her payment system, prompting NASA to send her to the ground without a crew on board.
The Spacex capsule, the crew dragon, which brought them back from space on Tuesday. The spacecraft separated from the space station after one o’clock in the morning directly, then returned to Earth, and slowed from more than 17,000 miles per hour before the publication of four large umbrellas.
Minutes later, when the capsule recovery teams lost, a curious loop revolving around it, a fun floor welcome party.
Once the capsule is raised on a ship, the door was opened and the groaning astronauts were extracted from the spacecraft. After months of weightlessness, their bodies still adapt to the gravitational pulling, raised on Gurneys.
“They all started in good health,” Steve Stic, director of the NASA’s commercial staff program, told a press conference after a press conference after Spacond. “They all looked as if they were of course naturally in the stage of landing and recovery, as their body tries to rehabilitate.”
My return with astronauts are Nick The Hague, the leader of this mission known as Crew-9, Aleksandr Gorbunov, Russian astronaut.
The four astronauts were scheduled to return to the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, where they would stay shortly for doctors to return home. “They will join their families the next day or so,” said Mr. Stic.
The mission alike confirmed the dominance of SpaceX in the growing field for the distance of the special space, and the comparative problems of Boeing. But as with many things in the early stages of the Trump administration, the return of astronauts was saturated with politics.
In January, President Trump suggested that the Biden administration had been cut off astronauts, and Elon Musk, founder of Spacex, said this month that the Biden administration refused to offer them to return them to the home soon.
But Bill Nelson, who held the position of NASA director during the Biden administration, said that NASA had never heard of Mr. Musk’s offer, and that the agency’s decisions are based on what was logical in the space station operations.
“On the basis that there was no contact with NASA, there was no political consideration from NASA’s point of view,” said Mr. Nelson.
About half an hour after the return of astronauts, the White House posted on social media, “The promise was made: President Trump pledged to save the astronauts who were cut off in space for nine months.”
However, NASA has been a plan since August for the Crew-9 mission to return with Mrs. Williams and Mr. Wilmor about this time frame.
An hour after the White House site, Mr. Musk offered a festive congratulations On x For a team in Spacex and NASA “for the return of another safe astronaut!” President Trump also thanked “for giving priority to this task!”
But astronauts also opposed the idea that they were stuck in space.
“It is a job. It’s fun. He was sometimes trying,” said Mr. Willmur in an interview from the space station last week with the New York Times. “But” they were stranded “? No.” stuck “? No.
At the station, Mrs. Williams and Mr. Wilmor had to adapt to their long long stay. From the start, they were less than clothes, because their bags were left off Starliner to make room for an alternative toilet pump. Depend on backup clothes at the satellite station.
NASA sent their clothes and other personal things after two months on board the Northrop Grouman. These automatic goods ships periodically reach Russia and the United States, bringing food, supplies and experiments.
according to Summary published by NASAThe astronauts at the space station, which revolves around 250 miles above Earth, made a variety of tasks at the station, including maintenance work and nearly a thousand hours of scientific research.
This included a space by Mrs. Williams and Mr. Willmor to survey outside the space station to see if the Earth’s microbes can live and perhaps even thrive in space.
NASA said that Mrs. Williams also helped prepare an experience to study how to produce microbes for nutrients such as vitamins, and also conducted research on how the lack of weight affects microorganisms that can be used to make food and medications.
Space pioneers managed to communicate with friends, family and public on the ground – they were able to reach email and video calls. They tried to put a positive rotation on the entire experience.
“You get more time to enjoy the view outside the window,” said Ms. Williams in the interview with the Times last week.
Not everything they saw was fun. From space, Mr. Willmore saw Hurricane Perle, who struck Houston last July. The storm was damaged by the ceiling of his house. Space pioneers also saw smoke from Los Angeles fires in January.
Mr. Willmore, who has a wife and two children, was absent from most of the upper year for his younger daughter in high school and the second year of his eldest daughter in the college.
He said that his youngest daughter was “difficult”, but she also told him, “I did not know how much I needed you until I went.”
Nine months is not an unusual long residence for astronauts in space – Frank Rubio holds the record for the longest space by an American astronaut in 371 days – but Mr. Wilmor and Mrs. Williams had to wander around the damage that the area could cause to the body. Without gravity, bone mass tends to reduce, a space version of osteoporosis. Space pioneers worked on the modified gym equipment at the space station, which included a vicious circle with a harness that prevents hostility from flooding.
By the end of their journey, Mrs. Williams and Mr. Wilmor traveled approximately 121,347,500 miles, after the Earth developed 4,576 times. Mr. Wilmor spent a total of 31 hours in a careful conduct during his career and Mrs. Williams 62 hours, which is a record number of an astronaut.
It was 286 days in space, including the journey in June and landing on Tuesday. But their mission may not have been exciting like that Sergey Creede, a Soviet astronaut, launched on May 18, 1991, to stay at the Soviet space station, Mir.
While Mr. Krekalif was around the ground, the Soviet Union was resolved, and he was asked to extend his residence for about five months, in part due to the disintegration of his country and money problems in Moscow.
He ended up staying in space for 313 days, and returned to a local country that no longer exists.
Reports previously contributed Talya Minsbergand Claire Musaand Michael Roston and John Yun.