Starliner astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, stranded on the International Space Station for nine months due to engine problems on their Boeing Starliner spacecraft, closed the hatch of the SpaceX Dragon capsule on Monday evening to begin the journey back to Earth.
NASA said the spacecraft's hatch was closed at 11:05 p.m. ET, with the Starliner crew members and Crew 9 members NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov aboard. The return to Earth marks the end of Hague and Gorbunov's six-month mission to the ISS.
“NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Suni Williams, Butch Wilmore and cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov pack their belongings and close the hatches as Crew 9 prepares to leave the space station,” NASA said in a post on X on Monday evening, along with video footage of the crew inside the capsule.
The crew will spend several hours before undocking from the ISS conducting pressurization checks, including spacesuit checks. All four spacesuits passed the checks, NASA announced at 11:35 p.m. ET. The Dragon capsule is scheduled to undock from the space station at 1:05 a.m. ET Tuesday.
The SpaceX Dragon vehicle, which carried four astronauts on the Crew-10 mission to the space station on Sunday, is expected to land off the coast of Florida at about 5:57 p.m. ET Tuesday after 17 hours of flight.
“Two days after Crew-10's arrival at the Space Station, Dragon and Crew-9 are scheduled to launch on Tuesday,” SpaceX announced in a post on X on Monday.
NASA had originally planned to undocking and fly back on Wednesday, but then decided to move the date up a day “due to favorable weather conditions expected for Tuesday evening,” the space agency said in a statement.
“The updated return date still allows space station crew members to complete the transition of duties while providing operational flexibility in anticipation of less favorable weather conditions expected later this week,” NASA said.
On June 5, Williams and Wilmore carried out the first crewed test flight of Starliner, which Boeing hoped would be NASA's second vehicle.
As Starliner approached the space station, five of the capsule's engines failed. The failure, unrelated to helium leaks in Starliner's propulsion system, delayed the capsule's docking.
Although the astronauts had planned to spend only eight days on the space station, NASA returned Starliner to Earth unmanned in September after deciding that transporting a crew was too risky.
On Sunday, the Crew-10 mission crew, consisting of NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nicole Ayers, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov, arrived at the space station.
Crew 10 lifted off Friday evening from Kennedy Space Center in Florida after fixing a problem with an air pocket in the hydraulic system of the clamp arm that supports the Falcon 9 rocket.
Ayers, McClain, Onishi and Peskov will conduct science experiments aboard the space station for the next six months, as Hague and Gorbunov have been doing since their arrival in September.
While Williams and Wilmore have repeatedly insisted that they are not “stuck” in space, they acknowledge that the uncertainty of the past nine months has likely had an impact on their families awaiting their return to Earth.
Earlier this month, Williams told reporters that she and Wilmore found the long stay on the space station exciting.
“Every day is interesting because we are in space and it is a lot of fun,” she said.
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