Miami (EFE) .- Astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams returned to Earth on a Spacex capsule after spending more than nine months at the International Space Station (EEI) due to the failures of a Boeing ship that took them last June and could not return them the following week as planned.
The Dragon in which they returned, the ‘Freedom’, successfully achieved soft amebly with the help of four parachutes on the coast of Tallahassee, the capital of Florida, around 3:57 p.m., time of central Mexico, as planned and in the midst of applause in the operations center.
The capsule deployed its parachutes without inconvenience and touched the water with precision in the designated area, where a Spacex recovery team and NASA waited to assist the crew, to which dolphins were also added.
Together with Wilmore and Williams, Nick Hague and Cosmonauta Aleksandr Gorbunov also arrived, who had traveled in the FREEDOM to the US last September with two empty chairs for the two astronauts of the test flight of the Boeing Starliner capsule, which in June had problems in several helium and leakers of helium.
The four crew successfully achieved a dive in the Florida Sea after a trip of approximately 17 hours since they were disassembled from the EEI, which four relays arrived last Friday that allowed today’s return.
Williams’s one week plan and Wilmore was extended to an adventure of about 285 days, but far from the record that the American of Salvadoran origin Frank Rubio, who accumulated 371 days in the US between 2022 and 2023, also for a ruling, but of a Russian capsule.
Just as Rubio has recovered from the long stay in microgravity, NASA has said that Williams and Wilmore do it because astronauts are prepared for it.
The nine -month delay was a problem for the scientists and managers of NASA, Boeing and Spacex that always rejected that astronauts were “stranded.”
Nor were they talking about a “rescue” mission, considering that it is part of the tests that several companies are doing as part of NASA’s commercial program.
The Boeing Starliner test ship, with which this company expected to accumulate points for a certification and compete with Spacex, presented several problems when arriving at the orbital laboratory.
Starliner arrived in early June 2024 to the US with both NASA astronauts and as a precaution he returned to Earth.
At the end of last September, the CREW-9 departed in the ‘Freedom’ with only two of the four usual astronauts to the EEI so that once the six-month mission ended, habitual time, it will return with Starliner crew.
After today’s successful dive, Spacex hopes to start receiving crews in the Pacific Ocean as a new alternative to Florida.
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Williams and Wilmore, who during the extensive mission carried out various scientific activities, can present loss of bone and muscle mass, alterations in vision and changes in the cardiovascular system.
However, NASA implemented a medical exercise and review protocols to mitigate these effects.
With 371 consecutive days Rubio is NASA’s astronaut who has had the most time in space in a single space mission, surpassing Mark Vande Hei, who had 355 days (2021-2022).
Rubio’s mission was longer than expected due to a refrigerant leak in Soyuz MS-22 ship.
The space record in general however has the Russian Valeri Polyakov, with 437 days (1994-1995) in the already disjointed Soviet Station MIR.
With EFE information
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