On March 18, stranded astronauts, Suni Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore safely returned home after spending an unexpected nine months in orbit.
The two were in high spirits when exiting their spacecraft, smiling and waving from the SpaceX Dragon after it made a soft splashdown off the coast of Florida. They were also greeted by some unexpected characters; a pod of dolphins inspected the capsule as it bobbed in the ocean.
In total, the pair spent 286 days in space, 278 days longer than their original mission was intended to be.
They were originally supposed to return to Earth on Sept. 3, 2024, however delays with Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft and other technical issues with the craft stranded the two in orbit.
It wasn’t until the Trump administration came to power in January that Trump tasked Elon Musk’s SpaceX with the mission to retrieve the stranded astronauts.
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The two did not attend a news conference following their return to Earth, but NASA officials said they are doing well, adding that it will take some time for the astronauts to adjust to gravity again and that they will both be subjected to medical examinations before being reunited with their families.
Reserve astronaut, Meganne Christian, told Reuters on March 19, “It’s still a big difference going from that weightlessness to suddenly being under gravity again. So they have to adapt to that both physically and mentally. So, that will be under direct medical supervision for a couple of weeks.”
”They’ve been there a long time and so they have lost some bones density, they’ve lost some muscle mass simply because they haven’t been working against gravity. They’ve probably lost some cardiovascular fitness as well because the heart is a muscle and that doesn’t have to work as hard when you’re in microgravity,” she said.
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NASA praises their resilience
NASA’s Commercial Crew Program Manager Steve Stich praised William’s and Wimore’s resilience and flexibility at a press conference following the landing.
“You know, the thing I think back of this whole time frame is how really resilient Butch and Suni were the whole time…They launched on what was going to be a short test flight with the crew flight test vehicle with Boeing. And then they moved very quickly into station air command operations and they became seamlessly part of the International Space Station,” Stitch said.
Local residents from Williams’ ancestral village in India celebrated her safe return to Earth, in the early hours Wednesday with dancing and firecrackers.
One local resident said, “We are so happy. We did not sleep last night because we were continuously performing rituals and praying for her safe return. We will perform sacred rituals tomorrow also and organise a community feast for everyone in the village.”
Residents of Jhulasan village, located in the Mehsana district of India’s western Gujarat state huddled next to a television as they watched the live broadcast of her return to Earth, before celebrating.
“We are going to celebrate her return to Earth like Diwali,” said a local resident, Sumit Patel.
Reuters contributed to this report
