On Sunday 16 March, crew 10, a mission launched by NASA in collaboration with SpaceX, successfully reached ISS, ensuring the return of Sunita Williams and Butch Willmore who are stranded at the station for the past 9 months. Crew 10 reached ISS at 0404 GMT and were greeted by the astronauts on board.NASA posted the journey on X capturing the long-awaited moment in space.
The astronauts are expected to begin their return journey on 18 March after the operations of Crew 9, to which William and Willmore belonged, hand over their operations to Crew 10, which consists of four crew members from Japan, the US and Russia. Sunita Williams handed over all operations to Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin who will continue the research for the next six months.
Nick Hague from NASA and Aleksandr Gorbunov, a Russian cosmonaut will accompany the two astronauts back to Earth. Talking to Mission Control Williams said “ It was a wonderful day. Great to see our friends arrive.”
Williams and Willmore went to the International Space Station for only a week, on what was Boeing’s first astronaut flight. The starliner however suffered many issues after which NASA decided that it would come back empty leaving the astronauts docked up in space for over nine months leaving them with uncertainty.
SpaceX decided to send a flight to lift the astronauts later, with more problems in their replacement capsule scheduled to lift them back after a couple of weeks shifted it to March. Finally, the long wait will be over as both astronauts will safely come back home by Wednesday if the weather permits and land off the Florida coast.
